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Re: Mentors VS Students
Let me start off by saying that every team is set up differently. Some teams have a technically strong student base that takes the initiative and does all or a majority of the work. Other teams have very professional, experienced and dedicated mentors who do a majority of the work but (hopefully) walk the students through the whole process to give them a look into what being an engineer is all about. A majority of teams though have some sort of mentor to student ratio that they feel provides the best experience for both groups.
I think that it should really be the students decision as to how much mentor involvement they want on the team, but this should be determined with everyone present and should be something that is followed from that point on. It isn't right to one day say that you, as a student group, want to design and build everything yourself and want the mentors to mind their own business, then the next day ask the mentors for help because you realize you don't know what to do. Having technical mentors available to you is an amazing privilege and should not be abused. These professionals come in on their own time and should be treated with respect.
That being said, it also isn't right for a mentor to deviate from the teams approved design, just as it would be for a student to do the same thing. A team meeting should be held with the team as a whole and the matter should be discussed openly and maturely. Depending on how your team is currently structured and what the ratio of mentor to student work is, the mentor may not have felt that what he did was out of line. I know personally, being a freshmen in college and coming back to mentor my old team over the MLK weekend, I had to be called out by a current student about doing to much work on the robot before even I realized it myself. So please leave tempers out it and discuss the matter as adults (yes, you may not legally be an "adult", but FRC is for big kids, so grow up) Most of all, remember that your on a TEAM, and on a team there should be no "mentors vs students".
Just my two cents,
Mike C.
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