Mentors not wanting to stay

[michael5402]

I know they have a busy schedules and they have family. Its not like we have asked them to stay late all six weeks. It has just been the last couple days and for all of them not to be there on bag day and not wanting to stay late on day up set some of the member on the team. The fact that we only needed one part ,which broke that day, to be finished and they would not let us go get the part mad us a little mad. We are only a 15 minute drive from andy mark and could have easily got the part and fixed the robot. I personally and on the drive team and we have had hardly any practice time. We did go to a week zero event but left fairly early because we had some major problems. I was on the drive team last year and las year we had a different mentor who always stayed late and two keep in mine two of our mentors are teachers and the other is a retired electrical, so having practice around there work schedule is not a problem.

[logank013]

Originally Posted by michael5402

I know they have a busy schedules and they have family. Its not like we have asked them to stay late all six weeks. It has just been the last couple days and for all of them not to be there on bag day and not wanting to stay late on day up set some of the member on the team. The fact that we only needed one part ,which broke that day, to be finished and they would not let us go get the part mad us a little mad. We are only a 15 minute drive from andy mark and could have easily got the part and fixed the robot. I personally and on the drive team and we have had hardly any practice time. We did go to a week zero event but left fairly early because we had some major problems. I was on the drive team last year and las year we had a different mentor who always stayed late and two keep in mine two of our mentors are teachers and the other is a retired electrical, so having practice around there work schedule is not a problem.

Like I was saying, you have 6 hours to work on the robot at your shop in the 7 days leading up to your first event. Also, remember that you can work on your robot as much as you want to (fitting within 30 lbs of prefabricated parts) at competitions. If it is just one minor part, you should have it fixed within your 6 hours of unbag time.

[jweston]

Originally Posted by michael5402

I know they have a busy schedules and they have family. Its not like we have asked them to stay late all six weeks. It has just been the last couple days and for all of them not to be there on bag day and not wanting to stay late on day up set some of the member on the team. The fact that we only needed one part ,which broke that day, to be finished and they would not let us go get the part mad us a little mad. We are only a 15 minute drive from andy mark and could have easily got the part and fixed the robot. I personally and on the drive team and we have had hardly any practice time. We did go to a week zero event but left fairly early because we had some major problems. I was on the drive team last year and las year we had a different mentor who always stayed late and two keep in mine two of our mentors are teachers and the other is a retired electrical, so having practice around there work schedule is not a problem.

I've mentored every single day this build season, including 19.5 hrs from Sunday to bag alone. Mentors do this because they care a ton about the students and love robotics almost as much. But they do have other things in their lives that take them away.

Having three mentors covering 6 weeks of build is asking a great deal of them. Please don't presume to know what goes on in the lives of any of your mentors, regardless of who they are. I'm sure they miss the time with the team as long as they feel like the students are engaged. It's critical to the success of a team to get as many supportive mentors as you can, both engineering and non-engineering. Even the most dedicated mentor can be overwhelmed or burn out when stretched too thin.

I recommend talking to your mentors about trying recruiting additional mentors. Please bear in mind that the students should be doing a fair amount of the legwork, but it definitely needs to be done in cooridination with your current mentors. Good options are parents (especially for non-engineering tasks) or local professional engineering societies (ASME, IEEE, SWE, NSBE, ACM, Alpha Pi Mu, Pi Tau Sigma, Tau Beta Pi, etc.). If you're lucky, perhaps one of your sponsors has an employee volunteer program.