Student Leadership

[kjolana1124]

So I was thinking. There's so many team's out there, and no two run the same. Because of this, I have a few questions for you all:

What's the student management structure of your team? How is it set up? How is it decided what students have these roles? Do you even call it a management team?

What sort of jobs do these people have? Do they each run a subteam? Do they handle all aspects of team running?

How much of a role do mentors play in assisting this management team? How many of the management decisions go through mentors first?

1124, for the past three or four years now, has had a five person management team. This team consists of a president, VP, community liaison, secretary, and treasurer. All of these are student-elected positions. Students who wish to run for any of these rolls must be nominated, prepare a speech, then have debates as well as a Q & A session. The new management team members are then announced at the team's end of year dinner. This year, our management team consists of four seniors and one junior (myself).

Each role, obviously, has a very different job description. For sake of ease:

Secretary: Keeps attendance, records of all forms, and updates the website with information and notes for future events
Treasurer: Parts list, taxes, handles the cash box. I must admit I don't know a terrible amount about this role
Community Liaison (Me!): Basically in charge of EVERYTHING on the team that deals with no one on the team. Any and all grants, fundraisers, demos, spirit, and other events have to run through them first. They're normally the second to speak at events, next to the president.
Vice President: In the event that the president gets hit by a rock, they're in charge. In most cases, it's up to the VP to keep order and help pass messages to the rest of the team.
President: Everything and anything. They have to plan meetings, talk to the school, make sure everything is on top of everything; no one detail passes by him. He's normally the first to talk for the team at public events.

Mentor role varies a lot. The management team, in many cases, will try and have periodic conference calls to plan for upcoming events. There's also a management team email group for transferring information and/or documents of interest. In both cases, our coach is attached and/or he's still on the phone.

This is just my two sense, I can't wait to here other people's opinions

[Hawiian Cadder]

our team works something like this

Captain: usually someone not intimately involved in any 1 area, yet works on everything.

CAD/DESIGN: decide how to build the robot, once the team decides on a strategy, we design the robot, and are responsible for ordering parts, and overseeing the construction, we do some work, mainly with the CnC mill.

Shop: People who build parts, the head shop man is in charge of making difficult to machine parts, as well as overseeing the assembly of the robot.

Electronics/Programing: The electronics people and the programmers work hard to get the prototype running, as well as to make sure all of the electronics work before the actual robot is built.

Chairman's: there are 2-4 top chairman's people who all work nearly exclusivity on chairman's.

Other people: the other people on the team do whatever is needed, wherever it is needed.

our team does not really require much leadership, as there are only about 15 people who are extremely devout to the club, the captain is responsible for making sure people are on task and working, as well as organizing events. the Design people, are basically in charge of making the robot run, they oversee the shop people and work with them.

usually some of the senior team members are a part of more than one thing, in our team, there are 5 people who work on a lot of different stuff to organize the construction of the robot.

[Tanner]

My team's seems generally pretty simple compared to things I've read about on FIRSTwiki.

As far as executives go we have:

• President - Leads the team, gives official word on major things if needed, overall spokesperson
• Vice-President - Available in case President dies, and aids President in maintaining tasks
• Secretary - Handles communication of meetings to members and records any meeting notes if any
• Treasurer - Handles any money (supposively) and is in charge of the BOM when it comes to it
• Historian - Handles history of the club via camera, still cameras, or newspaper articles

Overall, we're not like a up-tight kind of club. Voting requires a resume sent in via email and we'll surprise them on voting day with a speech.

As far as like groups go, it varies depending on what we're doing. Here's a few I can remember without going and looking at our group selection list:

• Electrical - Wires the robot and make sure no magic smoke appears
• Mechanical - Wheels, motors, 'n things
• Programming - Handles the 0's and 1's, works with Electrical and Mechanical to make sure the robot does the right thing
• Awards - Looks over any sub-groups to make sure we're working on awards

*can't think of any more*

As I said, we're really relaxed and when we're working its not like "hey - I need a mechanical person over here", but the groups just aid us in the beginning when finding where to put the freshman when they want to start.

Oh yeah, usually each group is "managed" by the most experienced person, if there needs to be a leader.

-Tanner

[Kims Robot]

1511's leadership structure and process is documented here:
http://penfieldrobotics.com/team/Leadership.php

Specific Details on Student Leadership Team Roles are here:
http://penfieldrobotics.com/forum/in...p?topic=2759.0

Most decisions are made between the students and mentors. There are some things like finance that have final approval through the mentors, but for the most part the students and mentors work together to come up with ideas, solutions, structures, plans, etc.

We feel that student leadership is as if not more important to grow than engineering prowess. We try to encourage every student to lead an event, fundraiser, subteam, activity or step up as a student leader. By the time they graduate 1511, nearly every student has lead something.

Best story is that I had one of our graduates tell me he had his first real job interview (for an internship) yesterday, and he was so relieved that he had gone through our leadership application process because he felt completely prepared!

[MarkoRamius1086]

Originally Posted by Hawiian Cadder

our team works something like this

Captain: usually someone not intimately involved in any 1 area, yet works on everything.

CAD/DESIGN: decide how to build the robot, once the team decides on a strategy, we design the robot, and are responsible for ordering parts, and overseeing the construction, we do some work, mainly with the CnC mill.

Shop: People who build parts, the head shop man is in charge of making difficult to machine parts, as well as overseeing the assembly of the robot.

Electronics/Programing: The electronics people and the programmers work hard to get the prototype running, as well as to make sure all of the electronics work before the actual robot is built.

Chairman's: there are 2-4 top chairman's people who all work nearly exclusivity on chairman's.

Other people: the other people on the team do whatever is needed, wherever it is needed.

our team does not really require much leadership, as there are only about 15 people who are extremely devout to the club, the captain is responsible for making sure people are on task and working, as well as organizing events. the Design people, are basically in charge of making the robot run, they oversee the shop people and work with them.

usually some of the senior team members are a part of more than one thing, in our team, there are 5 people who work on a lot of different stuff to organize the construction of the robot.

Wow. That sounds exactly like our team! We have two captains this year... but the number of captains changes about every year.

[big1boom]

2022 is an entirely student lead team.

We have an 8 member student board
2 Mechanical Leads (Drivebase/CAD and Manipulator)
3 Control System Leads (Electronics and Programming)
1 Treasurer
1 Communications Director (Awards, Team e-mails, contact with other teams)
1 Extra person who is able to help out with most things


This student board makes all the decisions for the team. The only exceptions are strategy and design because we involve the entire team in those decisions. Normally at board meetings we will have one or two mentors there, but it is not necessary. The mentors are allowed to present ideas, but they do not get a vote in the decision.

[blackbrigadeer]

Our team has three student leaders: the Business Lead, who oversees our Business Division, our Build Lead, who oversees the Build Division, and the Team Captain, who does administrative work and behind the scenes support.

Within both divisions, students are able to become Task Leads, making them the head of their own project (for example: drive train, bumpers, scouting, etc) and giving them valuable leadership experience as they move up through the team. All members are strongly encouraged to become Task Leads, though many of our members work on tasks under the Task Leads.

Elections decide our Build Lead, Business Lead, and Team Captain, but our Task Leads are whoever steps up to the challenge. We have weekly Task Lead meetings (Task Leads + 3 leaders) and weekly team leader meetings (3 leaders + mentors + anyone else interested). Notes are posted online for the team to see.

We've found that this system works pretty well for us [:

[Josh Fox]

For the full breakdown of Team RUSH's team organization you download our Toolkit for Success, which documents everything our team does here.

So here's the summarized version:

2 Students are Team Co-Captains
1 Student Captain for each sub-team

Chassis Sub-Team Captain

Mechanism Sub-Team Captain

CIG (Community Impact Group) Sub-Team Captain

Controls (Includes wiring and sensors) Sub-Team Captain

Programming Sub-Team Captain

Above Chassis (Handles mechanisms not covered elsewhere) Sub-Team Captain

Then there's usually 1 full-time adult leader devoted to each sub-team as well.

[Jon Jack]

We've set up our student leadership as such:

Direction of Engineering - They're responsible for anything related to engineering.
Manager of Mechanical Design - They're responsible for any mechanical sub-systems of our robot. They're also responsible for organizing our spare parts and tools.
Manager of Software & Electrical - They're responsible for all the electronics and software on our robot.
Manager of Strategy & Scouting - They're responsible for organizing and training our scouts and working with the drive coach on developing match strategies.

Direction of Public Relations - They're responsible for the non-engineering side of our team.
Manager of Outreach - They're responsible for working with our community partners and sponsors.
Manager of Finance - They're responsible for handling grants and maintaining our business plan.
Mentoring Coordinator - They work with the FLL and FTC teams we mentor to make sure that each team has mentors at each one of their meetings.

Once a week we have a managers meeting where the student leadership and our lead mentors sit down and discuss the direction of the team. Managers report on the progress of the projects their group is responsible for.

[baruffir]

The Enforcer's bylaws can be found here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2356

They provide details about the structure of the entire team. Here's a brief overview.

Officers
Captain: Oversee the entire team, coordinate team meetings, oversee other officers
Secretary: Keep team records, email out updates on what got done during a meeting, and an agenda for the next meeting
Treasurer: $$$ Team budget, talk with sponsors, Fundraising
Engineering Representative: "Project Manager" for the robot, coordinate with engineering mentors, oversee engineering committees (see below)
Director of Community Outreach: In charge of all outreach efforts, oversee non-engineering committees (see below)

Engineering Committees
Systems: integration of robot parts, CAD, rules
Programming: code, control board
Electrical: wiring
Mechanical: base, drive train, manipulator
Robot Support: crate, transporter (robot cart), practice field

Non-engineering Committees
Dream FIRST: leads our team's science literacy initiative, coordinates the planning and execution of all events (see http://www.dreamfirst.org for more information on this program)
Animation: develops and submits the animation
Fundraising: leads team fundraising efforts
Archiving: Chairman's Award, Woodie Flowers Award, document team history and accomplishments
Team Member Support: food, buttons, t-shirt design, promote team spirit
Technology and Media: videos, pictures, website

[Katie_UPS]

This year, we're a team of about 10-15 students (depending on what you would call a member). Our structure is

Leaders: Any student that takes guidance is a leader. There was no assigned "leader" this year (you don't need a title to be a leader)(my favorite quote).
Builders: Anyone that walks in the shop and ends up making something.
Programmers: the most defined group, they program.
Chairmans: Anyone (commonly 1 full time and 1 part time person) who is willing to work on Chairmans/Woodie Flowers/all submissions
Animation: More defined like programming, they animate.
Media: Got a camera? Are you taking pictures? You're media (but a specific two-three make a banquet video each year)

We decide strategy and basic robot design (function) as a team. We then have at least one kid working on CAD with mentors (we're rookie dominated this year, but we're training them to be FIRST buffs).

Mentors and Parents (this year) handle most of the funds and stuff. Outreach is student led but not a specific group. Because we're so small, there's a lot of overlap, and not too much distinction.

[dancingfool]

The Fighting Pi has a different kind of structure. We come from a rural area and have what I would consider an average sized team having 25 students this year. I'll describe it briefly, but please refer to the picture I’ve attached, it outlines the division nicely. We are divided as follows:

Our Head Mentor is our school liaison/coach.

The head mentor nominates student for the book keeper position. This person keeps track of all team funds, as well as community service and outreach hours as well as refunds. Although this is a head mentor nomination, it is a student elected position. We also have:

1 Mechanical Division Captain +Lead mentor
1 Controls Division Captain +Lead mentor
1 Business Division Captain +Lead mentor

It is the team captain’s job to preside over others in their department, hand out jobs, keeping people busy, etc. They are also responsible for communicating with mentors, maintaining good morale, and reporting habitual poor performance.

Each captain is assisted by a "lead mentor". This mentor is in place to make sure tasks are being delegated out, and completed in a timely and efficient manner. This position is decided upon amongst the mentors as they see fit prior to October 1st (The Start of our season).

From here it is fairly simple, the mechanical and controls division will decide on their organization based on the year’s game, what it requires etc...
However, the business division is much more strict because it does not vary much year to year. So, the business division is divided into sub-committees such as: swag, newsletter, spirit, awards, scouting etc...

These subgroups vary from 3-5 students, and every team member is required to participate in at least two of them. This helps to ensure that the workload is spread across the team and that we are constantly training our successors.

Also, our mentors and students are on equal ground, this allows for students to be able to voice their opinions freely and for a more relaxed environment. we like to use the argument that no idea is stupid, because even if you think it is, it may be the best idea, or lead to another idea that turns out to be the best option.

Lastly, I've attached our by-laws and management sections if you'd like to do a little bit off reading. The go into complete detail and aren't too long.

[Barngirl425]

my team is tiny, 10 people max and this year we were pretty much all freshmen. This year we only had

1 student leader who actually lead everything meetings and delegating ect
1 programming leader

Faculty advisors and mentors are on equal grounds with the student leaders. it makes for a real cooperative relationship and we do only have 2 mentors (1 programming and 1 environmental engineer) If you have any questions please let me know

[kjolana1124]

Originally Posted by dancingfool

However, the business division is much more strict because it does not vary much year to year. So, the business division is divided into sub-committees such as: swag, newsletter, spirit, awards, scouting etc...

I can't help but wonder...swag?

[dancingfool]

SWAG is by far the awesome-est acronym ever it means

S : stuff
W: we
A: all
G: get

meaning buttons, lanyards, pens, you name it...