My team is starting to reach a cross roads unfortunately, we are 3 digit team thats been around for a long time that unfortunately has slowly lost mentor support, particularly mechanical.
Our head mentor retired and although he is still very involved, he now snowbirds down to Florida during the winter and is only available to help draw during build season. Our other head mentor helped run the team from his mid 20s on but now has kids of his own.
We need to find a way to recruit young talent, particularly those with mechanical expertise and that kinda know what to expect with FRC.
Those of you who have successfully recruited mentors, what did you do? Any recommendations? In a way, we are trying to save our team!
If anyone in Southern NH is looking to mentor a team, I’ve got a team for you!
I’ve had a good deal of success in re-recruiting former team members who have gone on to take their degree in ME or whatever, then took professional jobs close to home.
My team has faced a similar situation recently. I would recommend flagging down the Senior Mentor for NH, as well as teams close to you. They can often have strategies for mentor recruitment in your area. Additionally, we found some success taking to some of the FRC focused social media groups for mentors or alumni that are open to mentoring.
Find parents (and/or 21+ alumni) you like and give them whiskey until they join the team. It works well. At last count, we had 28 mentors who are at least somewhat involved.
(I only speak on behalf of a pretty small social circle, it may differ in other circles)
My FRC social circle is largely comprised of like, 10-20 college age or young adult mentors that all come from the same group of teams in some way or another. Making close friends on other teams is really important, and socializing is pretty key at events for future mentor recruitment. This sounds really obvious, but it can be easy to let an event slip by without actually meeting new people that intently (because you’re so busy making sure your kids aren’t drilling through their hand or whatever).
“Cold-calling” a team to offer to join as a mentor is really rare for people my age (for context, I just graduated college a year ago), because 1. its scary, and 2. what if I don’t get along with the other mentors and it just ends poorly? and now it’s going to be awkward at future events if I join another team?
So I’m far more likely to join a team I have friends on already. As a personal example, I just moved to the Boston area and there are a ton of teams here. I only know people on 1 Boston area team (125 - I met Brando at champs). Who do you think I’m most likely to reach out to to mentor?
Now, once you’ve got young mentors, setting them up for success is a totally different topic…
Step 1 to attracting young talent is to set your meeting times to start late on weekday evenings. Note, there’s an inherent tradeoff here that you will need to work though: If you meet at school, your students will probably need to go home at the end of the schoolday and then come back again for the robotics meeting. This generally increases the burden on families and makes it harder for the team to serve students with limited access to transportation.
We have gotten mentors the same way. They are younger in their early 20’s with FRC experience. I have a few more ME’s in the middle of their college career that want to come back to mentor after graduation. I was a lone mentor for several years and now I look forward for them to pick up to run the team as I am also nearing retirement age.
The main mentors we pull from parents who are willing to be involved. In my case I’m mentoring because my children were members of the team in the past, and I like supporting the new students. However, lately we’ve been getting specialised mentors by contacting sponsers. As I understand it, many businesses have contracts which require them to do a certian amount of community service, and we can offer them a way to provide that by loaning us an engineer. They don’t stick around, but they help with specific areas.
+1 to everything above, but honestly it’s very feasible for a team to do alright without mechanical mentors, you just need students who are willing to pick up the slack and learn on their own
Our tactic was to organize our team to be appealing to mentors, including:
Scheduling meetings when working adults are likely to be available (i.e. after 6pm on weeknights, and no earlier than 10am on Saturday)
Limiting meetings to 4 days per week so coaches (and kids, for that matter) can still do other things with their lives
Providing a hot meal every meeting, and time to eat it
Developing a robust training program so coaches can work with students on things that they are both passionate about, rather than a neverending circle of basic training
Developing expectations of student team members that make for a minimally frustrating experience for coaches. i.e. expecting students to demonstrate attitudes and behaviors akin to an internship experience and/or high level travel athletics team.
Getting to know prospective mentors and scheduling/organizing workflow so that they can fit in and contribute.
It took a few years to get traction but has worked reasonably well.
This rings very true here in rural Minnesota. If my students go home after school, maybe 2-5 make it back later.
The ones without a license can only get back if a sibling or parent is heading back into town. The ones able to drive are even more difficult to get back. They have their other hobbies.
And ice fishing! Man, if they get a sniff of a frozen lake on their drive home, they are heading out to the fish house on their '96 Indy 500. They might be out there for a week! And even though there are only 10 lakes in our district, most are near our main county roads - so the chances are good they are out ice fishing by 4pm.
