Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oblarg
One person for a large number of teams is not very much "institutional support."...
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How many FIRST Senior Mentors would you want in order to call it sufficient support? This past season, I think there were enough to average one for about every 65 teams. |
I can imagine, but not realistically expect FIRST HQ, or any other entity I know about, will be able to hire "enough".
Oblarg might have a different expectation.
Seems like recently posted data showed about 8% of roughly 3000 teams dropping out of FRC annually. If most of those are teams that wanted to stay but couldn't because of too much struggling, and if FIRST HQ wanted to have someone meet with each once every two weeks throughout a 26? 52? week period...
Back of the envelope says:
8% of 3000-ish teams = 240 FRC teams to be helped.
Traveling to visit 8 FRC teams every 2 weeks = Visitor's rate
(240 FRC teams every 2 weeks) / (8 FRC teams every 2 weeks / visitor) = 30 visitors.
Employing 30 people on the road across North America, and a few other parts of the world, for 26? 52? weeks per year to try to prevent 8% of the FRC teams from leaving the program would be a huge expense, and might not have a large effect.
Also, what I roughed out above would not give any special attention to the remaining 17% (510) FRC teams that would be in the bottom quartile (in terms of team "health") each year.
Maybe investing in online classes, and similar training/help would give a bigger total ROI, and consume a smaller total investment?
Blake