Mentor Meeting - 2018-08-07
Attendees:
- Rocky Roberts
- Nathan Hogge
- Mary-Margaret Whitley
- Amy Nagy
- Ana Karl
- Tim Jackson
- Dan Formica
- David Leclerc
- Mike Young
- Dan Delisle
- Iain Gordan
- Lucas Ambler
- Cody Fairall
- Eric Worthing
Rocky Kicked off the meeting with a query to each mentor as to what is her top suggestion is for improvement
- Consistent Calendar for Students
- Mentor Practice with Students
- Consistent meetings for mentors
- Kick-Off- want to adapt to our team needs and improve the experience
- Communication- emails/ etc
- Tracking students roles and attendance
- Student Leadership training- give individual groups with more structure and training
- Mentor teach vs. do
- Model a lesson plan for group training
- Student accountability - when given a task they need to follow through and be held accountable
- Roster with student mugshot?
Discuss mentor responsibilities and new mentor policies
(Rocky) Proposals:
- 1st year mentors to be categorized as volunteers to alleviate pressure and serve as a backup to the mentors.
- 2nd year + Mentor's Kids are exempt from pay to play
- Mentors with extensive hours logged would not have to pay for travel to events (for their student?)
- Advisor Mentors who cannot attend regularly would not own projects and would have less influence on the direction of the team
Discussion on this touched on Mentor skill sets, but overall it was left unclear on how these lines are drawn. Further discussion seems necessary.
Communication Plan
(Rocky)
- Slack as primary
- Email for Announcements (with a ping on slack to let people know to check their email0
- One Calendar (without invites)
- Remind delegated to urgent needs - alerts/emergencies
- All Team wide communication will be coordinated through and sent by a coach for consistency
Review team organization structure, assign mentors to each group
(Nathan)
- 7 roles
- Mentors asked to align to 1
- Floater category for those who are more value added across groups (ie too flaky to focus
)
Please Review
tdogs_org.pdf
Discussion that followed yielded the following on the board
In summary of that discussion
- Top Sponsors will get presentations on their premises by our students after interesting accomplishments
- Sponsers/Parents will be invited to project presentations
- Sponsors will be re-termed “Investors”
- Project Presentations can be a vehicle for recruiting
- Jim Alexander emphasized the need to be heavily engaged with the school board especially since two STEM advocates will be leaving
- Social media is to be added to the public relations category
- Assignments
- Tim - Safety and Materials
- Dan D, Dan F, Cody, Beth, Thomas - Build Management
- Iain - Build Management and Competition Management
- Mike, Lucas - Competition Management
- Jim - Floater with emphasis on Competition Management
- Nick - Competition Robot
- David - Administration
- Amy - Finance
- Ana, Mary-Margaret - Public Relations
- Eric - Floater
Discussed how projects will have owners. Some long term projects have physical locations, with teams assigned, and inventory.
- Varsity
- Initial suggestion - all team leaders and the competition robot team will be varsity
- Competency Matrix (A specific chart was mentioned
) - Point System was discussed - M&M and Beth have already put some time and thought in on this one
- Captains
- One for each of the 7 roles
- Have not found correct title for those (captain, leader, officer, …)
- May rotate among students if captains are not meeting expectations
It was clear that students will have the ability to earn their way to where they want to be on the team. Rocky will use a video game metaphor to drive home how success lies to a great extend in their hands.
Review mentor project status
- Room organization - Iain, Jim will advise on build room organization
- LCRA
- FTC/FLL - FTC research fell into public relations - Eric wants to be involved
- Trailer - Carpet wont fit - (needs wrap)
- Conely Cleanup - Within 2 weeks - need Jims or other trailer to haul carpet to GM
- Outreach
- Chairman's - Students are geeked, going in head first, Theme - We're not done yet
- Sponsors
- IT structure and WIKI
- Recruiting
Discuss Fall Training Calendar
Sept – Dec: Training
- Kick off meeting in Cafeteria - launch ping pong ball (PARENTS REQ)
- Info session mtg
- Weekly meetings
- Training and Certifications
- Outreach, training, prototypes and research
- Awards prep, Roster, etc
- Demo / Mini competition
- Build prep mtg – Announce varsity team (PARENTS REQ)
Jan – Feb: Build
- Kick off
- Design mtg
- Weekly “Sprint” meetings
- Bag
- Competition prep mtg – new teams assignments (PARENTS REQ)