Mentors

Many teams need mentors to help provide technical guidance and to help solve problems. They add an outside real-world perspective for the team members and serve as powerful role models for the students. It is also a great way to introduce students to careers in science and technology.

New Orleans Science & Math student with the team's robot in the 2005 competition.

A mentors job is to give advice, support, and encouragement to the teams. Mentors may provide guidance for structuring a technical approach, help solve specific problems, assist with computer programming, set up experiments to evaluate designs, and help with the problem solving and trouble shooting.

Mentors are not expected to build the team's robots themselves and they are not expected to have all the answers. Like the team members, mentors also learn a lot working with a FIRST Robotics team. In fact, students and coaches can learn from a mentor who has to work at finding a solution.

More information about being a mentor can be found at the official FIRST Robotics web site. The FIRST Documents & Updates web page also contains essential technical information to assist teams with the design of their robot such as:

	Competition documents & drawings
	Detailed information about the arena
	Important documents on the kit and robot
	Updates (this should be checked periodically, especially closer to the deadline)

If you are interested in mentoring a team, please contact Barbara Pailet.