In Search of A Mentor

[dcarr]

If your team is associated with a school, try and see if you can contact alumni who might enjoy giving back. They've been great resources in our case.

[Mc Kenna]

Also now is the time to be reaching out to other local power house teams and asking if they can step up and help you mentor your team. They might be able to include you in things like their cad workshops ect to help ease the transition for a new mentor.

[Darbus]

We've talked to mentors we know from three other teams in the area, and have received a few helpful suggestions as to how to go about our search. We hadn't thought of asking for more direct help as Mc Kenna suggested, but we'll definitely keep that in mind. We have sent an email to our regional director, but unfortunately haven't received a reply. We'll try emailing our area's Senior Mentor. Our previous primary mentor wrote a page about the role of the mentor for our team that we can provide to parents or any other such. Almost all of our administrative business is handled by students, with the primary exception of just a few things like hotel reservations that are taken care of by a teacher. Our previous mentor was actually the student who started our team, and seeing who all else in the way of alumni might be out there is definitely a good idea.

Thank you all very much for your replies.

[kellymc]

I'm a mentor for Team 766 Menlo Atherton High School in Atherton and have talked with Ken Mitchell about finding mentors for your team. I know that Ken and Jim are out looking for people to help support your team.

I'll see if I can reach out to some people that I know that might be interested in becoming a mentor.

If you need any help, please feel free to reach out to me as well as Team 766 and we can help in any way that we can.

Kelly

[tsaksa]

You might want to contact the exploratorium. They are likely to have information on individuals in the area with the kinds of skills needed for a position like this.

Oh no! 751 lost their mentor! I always like playing with 751. Therefore, I will not let you guys go mentor-less! If you ever need anything before/during/after the season, the team at 256 will be more than happy to help with whatever we can!

[Seth Mallory]

You should check at the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation up the hill from you at the Pony Ranch. They have some skilled folks at that place and one of them may be willing to help. The son of the founder went to your school. http://www.milvehtechfound.com/index.html

Good luck as other teams near you have lost their senior mentors this year and are also searching.

[Darbus]

Kelly- that's really great to hear. We'd emailed both Ken and Jim, but as we hadn't gotten a reply, we didn't know if anything was going to come of that. Andrew- we like playing with you guys, too.

Thank you all very much for your support and suggestions.

[kellymc]

Have you been able to find a mentor? If not, please send me a PM and we can talk about any help that I may be able to provide.

Kelly

[Darbus]

Kelly- We have a mentor lined up, and we're hoping that it will indeed go through. Thank you again for your support.

[protoserge]

Glad you found a mentor!

Have you searched for additional mentors that work for your sponsors? This helps to build a stronger bond between the team and its sponsors.

[Darbus]

We hadn't thought to reach out to our sponsors on this, as they're primarily non-engineering companies.

[roystur44]

Originally Posted by Darbus

Kelly- We have a mentor lined up, and we're hoping that it will indeed go through. Thank you again for your support.

If your team is in need of additional help I could poke a couple of the elder team members on our team. Feel free to ask for help, recommendations, design reviews, programming help. Our meetings are open to the public and our lab and robots are available for inspection. We hold classes on a variety of topics. This summer we held beginning programming classes. It went well.

On Sept 16, 2012 we are holding our "First" ever Robo Camp where parents and interested students can come to our lab and listen to a variety of presentations by the team members. PM me if anyone is interested in attending and I can get you some info. Our lab is in Mountain View, CA