[mtaman02]

Originally Posted by FourPenguins

This is a follow-up to my previous thread, "Responsibilities of a Mentor."

What do you think are the responsibilities of the student captain of a team? Is this captain responsible for initiating contact with sponsors? Planning events? Coordinating robot construction? Ordering supplies? Maintaining discipline? Communication to the team?

What are the responsibilities and privileges of captains on other teams? Does your team have a handbook or training for student leadership?

To Answer #1, The Job of the student captain is to follow orders from the mentors and pass those orders around and make sure that all gets accomplished. Their job should be to assign specific tasks to individuals OR groups of students on the team and create committees to handle said tasks. The leaders of those committees are responsible for making sure that those under their command are doing what they're suppose to and to notify the student captain and mentors any lack of participation by the people under their command. The Sub Captains are responsible for holding meetings and to update the chain of command of their progress right down to the smallest detail. It is also the job of the captain to get their hands dirty and be involved w/ almost everything so that they can help the committees properly. You don't need to know EVERYTHING bu you should have a very good idea of whats suppose to go on in each category so that if someone misses something they can pick up on it and bring it to that persons attention.

To Answer #2, There shouldn't be any special privelages that seperate a regular student member and the student captain. Everyone should have equal privelages.

I was a captain for my final year in HS and it came to me naturally as time went on. I recieved no training from mentors OR students. I did my best to know what was going on in every committee so that I can help out as best I can. I also helped the team contact keep team related records and such in check and only stepped in on the committees to check on their progress. Basically I was a Jack of all trades on the basic level. As far as privelages were concerned I got the same treatment on the team got and nothing more. If I slacked off I was warned and told to correct it (which goes for school work and robotics work). Team Captains should lead by example and the students on the team will follow suit. This helps to make sure members on the team are behaving appropriately on and off the field. When a team member messes up, it makes the student captain look bad as well as the entire team, if the student captain messes up it makes the mentors look bad and the team, if the mentors mess up it makes the district look bad. So on and so forth.

As a captain you should as I said before lead by example in a positive way, know whats going on, assist the team members and mentors and the rest of the team will follow suit and any dead weight can be weeded out from there. When the student captain isn't doing their job the members under his command aren't doing their job either.