All female team- students AND mentors

[Kate00]

Just a question, what is your reasoning behind having all female mentors?

As a former member of an all-girls team, with a mix of male and female mentors one year, and mostly female mentors the next, I wouldn't recommend a team that was all-female, both mentors and students. As I have mentioned in this post, males and females think differently, and having both types of mental processing in a room is very beneficial to the solving of problems, including the ones we get posed in FIRST.

An all-girls team is a very good idea, but that doesn't in my mind extend to mentors. All-girls teams encourage more types of girls to be exposed to FIRST, because they removes the element of girls not wanting to scare off guys by joining something that is stereotypically "nerdy." Personally, I would not have joined a FIRST team if I were not at an all-girls school, and I am very glad I did. Male mentors would not have acted as a deterrent. Male students would have. Another benefit to the male mentors is that, if your school is an all girls school, it gives them a set of social skills (interacting with males on a less formal basis than with teachers) that they may or may not have. I know this was one of the benefits to having male mentors on my team.

My recommendation for the whole situation is that if you're really set on the all female program, go for it. See how it works for you. Every program is different, and I'll be very interested to see how you progress. It's certainly a unique situation. I hope you have a great rookie year, and no matter what happens, I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun and inspiration.

[sheltie234]

We helped start an all girls team this summer. Their team name is Flower POWER (Preparing Outstanding Women for Engineering Roles) Bots 2160. Not all of their mentors are girls, but several of them are.