How many mentors?

[alexander.h]

This poll is to know how many mentors your team has.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

We have always been very lucky. We have a combination of Motorola engineers, teachers, former team members and parents.

[DonRotolo]

Depends on the definition of Mentor.
Adults? dozens.
Adults who show up more than half the time? about a dozen.
Adults who are there virtually every minute? about 5.

[Boe]

Our team probably has around 20 or so adults involved
~10 of which are technical mentors who show up at the shop
~4 of them are there the vast majority of the season

[cadandcookies]

If the consideration is "involved adults," probably somewhere north of 50. If it's people that actually commit to working with students in a given role, we have about 30. The latter is our definition, because our team also has a booster club of adults who aren't really involved in working and teaching students, as well as adults who will help with one very specific task.

We have 6 mentors total. 5 of them are engineering mentors, though usually we only have 2-3 around at any given moment.

[Jon Stratis]

It's interesting to see how many mentors everyone has, but it doesn't give you the entire picture. As some here said, there are different levels of involvement. Is one full time mentor equivalent to two half-time mentors? What about a mentor that shows up once a week?

Additionally, a lot can be said for the student to mentor ratio. If you have a very low ratio (for example, more mentors than students), that could be indicative of issues on the team - a lot of part time mentors, more mentor-input and less student input, or a general lack of organization from having too many people who could see themselves as "in charge". The reverse is also true - a very high ratio (very few mentors with a lot of students) could indicate a lack of personal interaction/inspiration with the students.

So, what's the right number? Traditionally, we've had 20-25 students with 6-8 mentors (all full-time), or about a 4:1 ratio, which seems to work out pretty well - Having the students work in pairs means each mentor helps two pairs each meeting - essentially bouncing back and forth between them to help provide guidance, a sounding board, and oversight, while still giving the students plenty of autonomy to experience things for themselves. That said, things are starting to look pretty interesting with this upcoming season... we just got done with our summer camp, and had 16 new students there! I don't know if this is an anomaly or due to finally having a build space at the school... but it means we'll be on the big side of "normal" this year (we were on the small side last year, with a bunch of graduating seniors), and if the recruitment numbers hold through next year and the year after we might turn into one of those "big" teams... Yikes! How do you handle it when the ratio gets to be 8:1?

[pntbll1313]

By definition a mentor has to advise someone. An "involved adult", unless involved directly with mentoring students, would be considered by our team a volunteer. (An extremely appreciated and welcomed helper to the team but not actually a "mentor")

We generally have 6-10 "mentors" and in addition we have a newly formed parent organization which we hope will be a great help this coming year!

[JeffersonMartin]

Depends. Should parents involved with our booster club be considered mentors? They certainly do a lot, but not necessarily mentoring. If it's people who are there everyday, I count 7, but if I count every adult who helps run the team, it's 20+.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Yikes! How do you handle it when the ratio gets to be 8:1?

Don't want to hijack the thread, but we started the 2013 season with 115 students, and ended with 80...with maybe 5 mentors at any given moment.

You do the math.

To survive, the students need to have all the skills they need to function during build season already - and that's what we do in the fall with "Pi-Tech".

PM me if you need more info.

[Koko Ed]

We fluctuate between 18 and 21.
Some of our mentors go way back in the dark ages of FIRST (y'know before there were alliances) with one being a part of FIRST since day one.

[AllenGregoryIV]

We have been running a 30 student team with one mentor. I've had a little help from parents in getting food to meetings and a few teachers that helped with trip supervision but none of them were involved with the student projects. It's definitely possible and like Don said you have to make sure you have students with a lot of the skills needed to handle build season.

This year we are bringing on two new teachers as mentors who have both been running middle school teams for the past few years. It's going to be an interesting transition for the team but it's coming at a good time since we just graduated nearly half our team last year.

[Walter Deitzler]

We have 2 engineering mentors and 1 "coach," who does all of the business things on the team (booking hotels, finding food, ordering parts, etc.)

[jimwick]

We have a core group of 5-6 mentors who are active all year; of those one or two are parents.
During the build season there are perhaps another 5-6 who are pretty regular; some of them are parents.
Another 10-15 adults help out in some capacity, such a helping with lunches, transportation, fundraising, etc.

This varies from year to year as students come and go; their parents usually come and go accordingly.

[evanperryg]

We have 13 official mentors, and 8 or so parents that show up and help sometimes.
of our 13 mentors:
12 showed up more than once during build season.
6 showed up regularly.
3 were at every meeting, the whole time
2 were in the shop until 2 in the morning with me and the drive team, the night before champs.
1 donates his (enormous) trailer and truck so we can move our pit and robot to our various events, has dug through the broken/dead components at his company to bring us really cool stuff, and has driven a truck full of students 5 hours to st. louis at 7 in the morning.