Team Size

[jweston]

It's about balance. You need to have a balance of students, mentors (technical and non-technical), facilities, funding, and planning. Things start to go haywire when a team is out of balance. Usually this means a team has too many students or too little of any of the other things.

One problem that I've seen is uneven sharing of student STEM growth opportunities. This is very important but it often takes a backburner to getting things done. Most teams want to put in their best effort as a collective, so the team relies on the most experienced students to do much of the work. This can lead to an imbalance between experienced students vs inexperienced students.

To avoid this pitfall, you need to look at your resource-to-student ratios and plan carefully. Focus on providing skillbuilding and practice opportunities among less experienced students so they are not crowded out. Nothing makes a someone disengage faster than having nothing to do. It's very important to make sure that the students aren't die-hard STEM fans aren't crowded out by the ones who already are.