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Re: Mentor Job Description
Keep in mind that, as the team grows and ages, the "job description" may change. A brief history of our 5 year old team:
- The first year, the mentors pretty much designed the robot, and were very hands-on. The students worked right alongside us, but we essentially led most aspects of the team. The team was half seniors and half juniors.
- The second year started out much like the first year did... until the students told us we were doing too much. So, we took a step back, worked with them to figure out how much they wanted us to do. We still did a lot of the design, but the students got a little experience prototyping and participated in more of the build. The team was almost entirely seniors (with half of them being new members, too!)
- The third year was really a radical change. The students spent a lot of time prototyping and understanding the design aspects before we started building (Personally, i think it was too much time prototyping). Despite that, some significant parts of the design still came from the mentors. We had 4 returning members, and 20ish new members.
- The fourth year the students really started running the team. This was really the first time we had students on the team who had been around a few years and really knew what the team, as a whole, needed. Again, the students did a lot of prototyping, made all the critical design decisions, and really learned their subsystem of the robot very well. a much smaller set of new members this year!
- The fifth year was definitely our best yet. Every subsystem was "owned" by a different student, and we had an identified design leader for the team, who helped drive the final design and the build season as a whole. The programming subteam, in particular, was so well led by a senior that she practically was a mentor.
In each of these years, the roles and responsibilities of the mentors has been slightly different. We work every year with the student leadership to find the right balance and to let the students shine. I think most of it comes down to experience. When you have students with several years worth of experience, they can do a lot more, and provide a lot more of the leadership the team needs. When you don't, that leadership tends to come more from the mentors. They key is recognizing when to step back and when to help out, which is something that can really only be learned from experience.
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Let's see some love for these fine people. Let's give it up for the refs. - Andy Baker [more] 
09-08-2011, 07:44
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