Information for Technical Mentors

Prospective Mentors

What is the role of a technical mentor?

Technical mentors volunteer to play an extremely valuable role providing technical guidance to student teams as they work on their prototypes. Due to the varied nature of students’ projects, we are seeking mentors with various areas of expertise, including 

• design

• mechanical engineering

• wearables and textiles

• electronics

• software engineering

• artificial intelligence

• working with the disability community.

The technical mentor role is distinct from the role of the team coach. Coaches are tied to a specific team and must be local to that team. Technical mentors may work with multiple teams and do not need to be local to any particular team. Coaches who want to offer their skills more broadly to the Challenge community may also serve separately as mentors.

What are the expectations for technical mentors?

Mentors choose how many teams they would like to mentor, then are matched with teams based on technical fit. The expected time commitment is about 1-3 hours/month for each team (through meeting 1-2 times each month), January through April, with slightly more time to provide feedback during two Design Review periods. Mentors and team(s) are responsible for scheduling and keeping meetings.

Mentors are also asked to assist with reviewing teams' submitted preliminary and critical Design Reviews (purple sections below), which are submitted as videos. This entails watching a few teams' videos (each 7-10min long) and filling out a review form to submit feedback to the team(s). To ensure a diversity of feedback, these reviews are to be done for teams that are not the one(s) you have been mentoring. You will have about a week to submit feedback to ensure we can get it back to the teams with enough time for them to incorporate it into their next set of prototypes.

Note that all mentors must also complete MIT's Working with Minors training and adhere to the associated policies.

Schedule for Mentors