[Jon Stratis]

From my experience, most teams start out that way - the mentors are the driving force behind the team. It doesn't matter if the robot is student built or mentor built, it wouldn't get done without the mentors there pushing the team. Neither would the awards submissions. Part of that is because, as a new team, no one really knows what to do, and the mentors (with much more general experience) can figure it out easier.

However, after a few years of working with a team, showing them how things should be done, what the schedule should be like, and all that other stuff, you'll find that the students start to do this stuff without needing to be pushed as much. Someone who's been on the team for 3 years and is now captain in their senior year should more or less know how the team should be run and what needs to be done. Of course, if "how the team should be run" is the mentor standing in front of the group all the time, then that's what they'll expect. We start and end every meeting as a big group gathered around our conference table. The captains stand up front leading the meetings, the students sit around the table. The mentors stand in the back. Yes, we do chime in when needed and help them stay on task... but it is student led. The only part of those meetings that is mentor led is a few words by the faculty adviser on schedule, meeting times, and other administrative items.

We've worked pretty hard to gradually shift work off of the mentor's shoulders and onto the students. It doesn't happen all at once, you have to set small, realistic goals. Our first year, the students showed up and did what we told them to build the robot the mentors designed. The second year, the students came up with the basic concept behind the design, then we built the robot based on a prototype a mentor brought in from home. The third year, the students spent almost 3 weeks building prototypes figuring out how the process works, and we ran out of time to get the robot working as well as we wanted. The fourth year, we really hit our stride on actually building a robot. We spent less time on prototypes, the robot did what we wanted, and it all went smoothly. The same for our fifth and sixth years. In fact, this year the team set a goal of being completely finished with the robot a week early. As mentors we had always pushed to get finished early, but always ended up with a 40+ hour final build weekend. While we didn't hit our target, the team really pushed themselves harder than we've seen before, having set the goal for themselves.

More awards-related, we pushed the students for a number of years. We tried to get them to keep a design notebook, which in previous years was a big flop. But this past year, we had a freshman come in who took it on themselves to make it a success... and the notebook was filled out during or after every single meeting. She copied sketches, tables, and equations from the whiteboards, captured all of the "failed" ideas that led to those that ended up on the robot, and really delivered a great end result. There is no doubt in my mind that it will only get better over the next few years, and by the time she graduates it will simply be "habit" for the team.

We pushed the team to work on chairman's every year, and some times it could be like pulling teeth. This year, though, the captains came in and drove the team towards putting together a great chairman's submission. They were both great technical leaders on the team before this, and they sacrificed a lot of time working on the robot in order to get chairman's as perfect as possible. We didn't win, but it set a bar that the team will have to beat next year.

Every year we meet with the new captains over lunch in the summer to help get them setup for the year. It helps for planning the summer and fall programs. And every year, I challenge them to pick one area of the team, or one award, or one item to improve on, without letting anything established slip. We get them to create a legacy for themselves within the team. I make sure I point out to the new captains what the previous ones did (only going back a few years... the captains they knew), to help give them inspiration and make sure they realize that they, more than anyone else on the team, really have the power to change and improve the team.

So, that would be my suggestion to start with. Talk with your captains, and work with them to develop a reasonable improvement goal they can take charge of. Having them push the goal really makes a difference for the team. Start with the most obvious, upfront student leadership ones (like having the captains lead group discussions instead of the mentors), and you'll find that future captains will naturally be more upfront and assertive, since that is what they saw and expect from years on the team.