Hello, everybody! As you can probably tell from my CD profile, I come from the world of FRC. I am also a student at the University of Maryland and I, along with professors in the Science, Technology, and Society Scholars program and from the Maryland Robotics Center, am working on starting an FTC mentoring program where UMD would provide mentorship and other services to (a) local FTC team(s).
Basically, our goal would be to get together a group of undergraduate students (most probably freshman in the STS scholars program) to act as the actual mentors for the team(s). Professors and graduate students would be involved in running workshops for the teams, since their schedules are less likely to permit being available to provide consistent support for an FTC team.
Now, as I said, I come from FRC, so my knowledge of the specific needs of FTC teams is somewhat limited, which is where all of you lovely people come in!
Here are some questions that I have for you all:
- What sorts of workshops would FTC students be interested in attending? Would teams even be likely to attend?
- What are some specific areas where you see FTC teams struggling that you think could be helped by this sort of mentoring program?
- Is one day per week enough support for the teams?
- Is there anything else that I am overlooking or any other general comments that you have?
We are trying to put together a
very rough draft of our proposal by the 21st.
Thank you all!