Mentor experience

[Monochron]

Before mentoring my current team I was a member of my high school team for 4 years. The experience I got on that team was mostly some very basic leadership duties, understanding of how the old FRC control system was wired, and pretty good quality drive-team and pit-crew experience.

However, barely any of that translated to helping me mentor this new team. My first year there was a lot of "boy I hope the mechanical guys can get that done" when there wasn't really strong mechanical leadership on the team. I also came in with the assumption that this new team would have a similar level of dedication, funding, and experienced mentors as my high school team, even though they were just entering their second year.
I found out that running a team consisted of much more than what I had done on my high school team. Right now I fill the roles of main mechanical mentor, funding/sponsorship dude, and occasional organizer of outreaches and meetings. None of which I had the slightest experience with 2 years ago. A willingness to figure out what needs to be done, figure out how to get it done (like learning CAD and studying others' designs), and then execute with a team is a much more beneficial skill than previous technical experience.

[TedG]

I am a professional drafter/designer working for a major Architectural/Engineering firm, I am a Senior Structural CAD Designer. Although I have many years of drafting and design experience working on large building projects, I have always loved Mechanical Drafting and Design. So when my son joined BERT in the fall of 2009, I stuck around and helped out all year long, learning to use Autodesk Inventor, etc (I normally work in AutoCAD and REVIT). After that first year, the advisors (who had been running the team for 16 years or so) wanted to stop running the team, so me and another parent of a member decided to run the team for the next 3 years. Thankfully one of those mentors decided to stick around and help out, as he had all the experience and is an EE. The other parent that helped run the team with me was a master electrician and very handy in the shop as well.

So to answer your question.. as new mentors, I brought professional drafting and design skills and a love for machines, and the the other mentor/advisor brought very strong electrical and mechanical skills. We had a couple of engineers on board with years of FRC experience to do and teach what we couldn't. One of them was a FIRST alumni with degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering.

The team is currently being run by the same EE mentor who had "left" the team in 2010 (Shout out to John D.= WFA winner 2013!), another FIRST alumni who is an engineer, and some parents who do an amazing job keeping up with organization, fundraising, advertising, all that.

Some of us current/past mentors still help out during the year when we can.