Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?

[sciguy125]

Originally Posted by DB213parent

Can I hear from some teams that have active parent organizations so we can find out if we're on the right track.

As it turns out, a good number of our parents are engineers. (Something about a fruit not falling far from where it started...) That means that they serve as both technical advisors and bringers of food. 1351 has decided that, as much as possible, "mentors" will only serve as "advisors". They will offer their advice, but it's ultimately up to the student who's in charge of the project to make a decision. They tend to get slightly more pushy when it comes to their own kids though. That's not to say that you have to be an engineer to help in the technical aspects of the robot. If you ask the right questions, you can help them better understand what's happening. Sometimes, just walking through a problem with someone will help them see it in a different way and may lead them to a solution. Until I got into FIRST, I didn't do much mechanical work. If someone asked me for help, I had to learn with them. Sometimes, I would ask a question that would turn on a lightbulb in their head.

Our new structure seems to indicate that this "advisor" role will be more strict. Our engineering branch is hierachry of students to manage the design and construction of the robot. From what I understand, their exact duties are still to be determined, but it's intended that the engineering leaders (high school students) have the final say in how their project is done.

Originally Posted by mechanicalbrain

Speaking strictly from actual experience being a engineer gives a mentor no advantage over a student when it come to building robotics.

I'm going to partially disagree with that. Being an engineer gives you an "advantage", but it isn't necessarily "better". From training, you have the knowledge and skills that a student doesn't have. This means you may have already run into certain problems that will come up and know how to fix them or maybe you won't make the same mistakes as a student. However, your training may cloud your vision. If you have a set way of doing something, you may not see a better way of doing it. A student, with less training, is forced to have more creativity. Something that is obvious to the student may have been blocked from the engineer's line of sight. I'm not saying that being a student is better for building a robot, just that engineers and students will each have their own views that could be better (or worse), depending on the situation.