mentor involvement

[Gabriel]

This is my first year as a team leader and a group of us are trying to plan for next year. This year we've pretty much had students design and build everything, but we're wondering how much mentor involvement is acceptable as we plan for next year.

Is it okay for students to talk about strategy and the basic design and for mentors to essentially build the robot off of that design?

How about for students to come up with the basic design for a particular subsystem (say an arm) and then for mentors to go build it without student involvement?

How about for students to come up with very specific plans (say a very accurate CAD drawing) and then for a machine shop to build off of those plans?

I know that there sometimes is a trade-off between the quality of the final product and what the students get out of the project. It seems fair that when its absolutely down to the wire and you have to ship a robot in order to fulfill your commitments to your sponsors student involvement takes a back seat, but what if a team were to plan up front that engineers were to build either one subsystem or the entire robot in order to create a better quality product? Does it matter whether its a rookie team or a team that's been around forever? Are there any possible sanctions against that team?

I have some experience on teams that were fairly repressive (and successful - at least with the robot) but I only have a very limited experience and I'm the only member of my team who is a FIRST veteran - I'm curious what others have experienced and what advice both students and mentors can offer a rookie team trying to figure out how to organize itself for next year.