When do mentors go too far?

[Mark Pettit]

An ex-mentor turned FIRST judge told me that, during a pre-regional judges meeting, FIRST told the judging staff that they were going to hear a whole lot of "our robot is 100% student built" as they made their rounds. This was followed by a directive that this does not matter and should not play into a team deserving any awards over a team that was 100% engineer built. He was surprised to hear that from FIRST and so was I when he told me about it.
Our team is in a constant state of change. 5 years ago when I first became my team's coach, we had a very overpowering mentor that designed, built, and programmed the robot. Our team more or less revolted against this and we had to make a really tough decision to get away from utilizing his knowledge and skills at all. For two years after that, we had students who were all of knowledgeable enough, interested enough, and capable enough that they could do everything themselves. All the while, we had a couple of underclassmen joining our "club" not team (see THIS THREAD) who were maybe into electrical and programming more than using tools and machining equipment. Today, these students are upperclassmen who require our mentor staff to do the majority of the build, at least the mast/arm portion of our machine, and then they (students) wire and program. Incidentally, we have some current Freshmen who are incredibly motivated and apt enough with tools and ready to take things over so we are planning now for a more student-built machine in the coming seasons. It's a constant evolution and whichever state we're in during any given season, the students who are in FIRST for the right reasons still take away knowledge, experience, and a desire to pursue engineering.
Basically, it just doesn't matter.

[Richard Wallace]

Back in graduate school, I bought a poster-size portrait of Einstein that features one of his most recognized quotations as a caption: "Imagination is more important that knowledge." [see my sig area below for the unabridged version of the quote and a link to an insightful essay on the subject]

That poster has been a fixture in my office for many years now. I never get tired of it.

This has been a great thread. I have been a mentor/sponsor/advisor for several kinds of technical competition over the years. I like FIRST better than the rest, and this thread has help me understand why. It's because FIRST is mostly about inspiration (and recognition), not education. Of course I am a big fan of education -- before taking my present job, I spent sixteen years either enrolled in or employed by institutions of higher learning. Knowledge is the foundation on which inspiration is built. But inspiration is the fountainhead of new knowledge, and of course old knowledge soon becomes as dry as dust without the new life that inspiration brings to every field of endeavor.

So I think it really does not matter whether an FRC team's robot is built by mentors or by students. All that matters is that everyone who participates in FIRST, or even just watches at an FRC event, gets inspired to imaginative participation in a world where science and technology become more important every day.