mentor training before competition

[reilly]

Just out of curiousity is there a mentor training session/s before the competition to prepare mentors?

[JP_1163]

If the students on your team don't have you trained before the big day then you're in for a ride!
My experience as a mentor is that you do a ton of OJT followed by an off-season of re-thinking your past mistakes, hopefully learning from them and avoiding them the next year. But seriously...
Get on the NEMO list and you can get some excellent assistance from people who are non-engineers (like me for example). Once you get to the venue the event takes care of itself but the time up to the final build day are hectic, the hours long but the rewards high!
Best of luck!

[Lil' Lavery]

Depends on what your mentor is doing I suppose. Every time has a differnent use for their adults, watching the team members, coaching, fixing the robot, ect.
Ours mainly play a chaperone role during competitions, but they occasionally jump in and help repair when we're stretched for time.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

Purdue University offers a "Mentor class" i.e., a class on Mondays that many of our mentors to take and do their own thing at, and then come to team meetings after ward and the other days of the week.

I assume many things are organized at those meetings in regards to assigning rooms and roomcheck assignments at competition, and just having mentor meetings and discussions.

Also, the entire team has an important meeting before each competition in regards to what's gonna happen, when we leave, etc so that everyone is on the same page.

- Genia