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What to expect from a Mentor
Role of the mentors
Mentors are guides and coaches for the student teams. They help teams stay focused and goal oriented, point out team strengths and weaknesses, and suggest areas where skills need to be supplemented, perhaps by the adding team members with those skills or by utilizing specialist advisors from sources known to the mentors.
Mentors help teams to:
- solidify as a team
- develop a primary research plan
- interpret research results
- develop market strategy
- derive a product or service development plan
- create an operating plan
- develop financials
Note that the key word here is "help." Mentors do not develop the plans; rather, they provide guidance to help the teams do so.
Mentors will let their teams know up front what their expectations are with regard to progress, timeliness, and responsiveness. These expectations should be adhered to.
Mentors are responsible for assessing the progress of their teams, evaluating work as the competition proceeds, and determining whether or not there has been satisfactory progress; if so, the teams may continue in the competition; if not, the teams will be disqualified.
Along the way, mentors highlight plan areas that need work or redirection and suggest directions to follow and to avoid. However, it is important to note that mentors provide advice, not content. Content is solely the responsibility of the student participants. Mentors do not write the plans.