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Originally Posted by magnasmific
...... In simplicity, it is a democracy.
We are straying from the politics of team structure, and letting the students structure themselves. We want fewer parents and engineers working on the robot, and more student involvement.
We plan to have a group of Kettering Students mentor the team. No engineers, no politics, no one in it for the wrong reasons. We want our students to enjoy their experience, learn as much as they possibly can, and have fun!
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Our team is run this way and I am an engineer. Our team is based on the engineer and parents guiding and mentoring. Maybe your experience with an engineer led team was not the best but do not automatically leave them out. Make sure that all mentors know and follow the vision and goals of the team.
On our team the students make the decisions, my role is to ensure that reliability is one of the outcomes. The students that stay with the team are there because they want to. We tend to get students joining for a variety of reasons. The structure we have in place requires that everyone has tasks so anyone who joins for playtime or their parents want them to eventually drop out.
I think you will find that the students will require structure until they learn enough to run the team and all its phases. A true democracy is great but someone has to make the hard decisions when needed. You may not want politics but you know that people are people and sometimes it takes a higher level to settle differences.
I wish you luck, you are taking on a big task. There are many other threads that talk about college students starting teams that have great advice.