[Jaine Perotti]

I have to say that I have done quite a lot of thinking on this subject.

My team, the Who'sCTEKS, is primarily a "student-work" oriented team. With guidance from one engineer and several other adult mentors, about 90% of the robot is student fabricated. The only items we do not machine in our shop are the parts for our custom transmissions. The only reason we do not make these in the shop is because we simply don't have the machining capability to do so.

With that said, our team has a pretty straight forward philosophy when it comes to allowing students to do work. Any student is welcome to work on a project, as long as they are qualified and/or willing to learn how to do it. Our mentors care very much about letting students gain hands-on experience. Even if this means that the robot will not be 100% perfect, our mentors still encourage us to get our "hands dirty", so that we can have a chance to use and develop our problem solving skills.

Personally, I agree with what many other people have said already - it is up to the team to decide on the structure that will allow them to best "inspire" the students. In the end, I think a healthy mix of both mentor input and student input creates the most functional team. A team with no technical mentors will have a harder time trying to learn how to design, fabricate, and troubleshoot properly. Likewise, a team who has mostly technical mentors doing the work will have difficulty teaching the students how to do the same things.

In this way, both extremes result in similar problems. A student who never had a mentor to teach them will have just as much difficulty answering questions during inspection as a student who was never allowed to touch the robot. On a team where mentors actively guide the students, but still allow them to use their own problem solving skills, students are much more likely to come away with greater theoretical knowledge as well as hands-on experience. This is how my team has been run, and it has been a wonderful experience for me.

I have had experience on both ends of the spectrum, however. I have done numerous independent engineering projects where I became very frustrated because there was no one there to guide me. For example, in my freshman year we had to independently build a mini race-car to compete at the science fair. I had alot of very good ideas for it, but became frustrated once I started building because I didn't have the technical knowledge to make it work. Years later, after gaining much more experience, I know what I did wrong and what I should have done to make it work. But back then, I would have been very grateful to have someone who could have guided me towards the right solution.

In terms of the ability to inspire, there is no doubt that teams from all over the spectrum have been able to inspire students to choose careers in science and technology. However, I do think that the best way to inspire is through guided learning. It is frustrating and discouraging to not have anyone to mentor you, but at the same time, it is also discouraging when you are not even given a chance to learn for yourself. Discouragement does not amount to inspiration. In my opinion, the best way to inspire is to provide a hands-on, yet rewarding, guided learning experience for any student who shows a desire to learn.

-- Jaine