[Rich Kressly]

In the words of Alex Slocum (and others), any time we generalize, we are wrong.

Categorizing is only helpful to a point. In this thread talking about NEM's and Engineering Mentors is only helpful to a point. Generalizing, at all, about an entire category is diffucult at best and destructive at worst.

Go visit 342 FRC teams and you'll see 342 different systems for doing business. Humans, in general, are involved with FRC teams because they see benefit in it for others and benefit for themselves. For some students/mentors/teams fitting into a category (such as "NEM" or "Engineering Mentor") works well and in other cases it does not.

Funny things can happen to an organization over time. Categories can help a team organize and improve efficiency and productivity. These categories, over time, can sometimes evolve into titles and position descriptions and, if such a team or group isn't careful, can have that lead to misunderstandings and turf issues.

Be sure to use categories, and units of measurement, and titles, and descriptions carefully ... never assuming/generalizing about a population. Like all tools, if these are misused, you'd be better off not having had them at all.