Structure

From OlinGCS

Revision as of 04:15, 12 February 2010

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Program Board

The program will be administered by a Board with three major responsibilities. The Program Board will maintain documentation regarding the requirements of the program (starting with this document); administer and organize the mechanism by which student work is approved and the Grand Challenge Scholar distinction is awarded; and oversee and support the Challenge Groups. The Program Board will be responsible for ensuring regular communication with other Grand Challenge Scholar schools. The Program Board has no defined size, but will be chaired by an Olin student elected by peers. The Board will ideally include a cross section of students, alumni, faculty, staff, and former faculty and staff.

Challenge Groups

The majority of community organization around the Grand Challenge Scholars Program will occur in Challenge Groups. A Challenge Group is a group of students, alumni, faculty, and outside guests, chaired by a current Olin student, who come together to share ideas, opportunities, and support each other in their work surrounding a given Grand Challenge or Challenge Area as listed (diagram to come). Though the group may take action on a project together, their primary standing purpose is to connect the students, alums, faculty, and others who share a passion and/or expertise in the content area.

The groups are not permanent – if interest wanes in one group, it may disband, while another more popular group may split into more specific groups if necessary.  It is up to the Group Chair and the Board to ensure alumni, faculty, and other valuable parties are brought into the group as effectively as possible. The Challenge Group chairs will be responsible for reaching out to the specific groups from other campuses that are working on similar problems and projects.

The Role Of Mentorship

Alumni, faculty, and affiliates bring two key roles to the table.

First, they mentor students, providing advice, context, networks, and pointers for useful tools related to the field.

Second, they offer the opportunity for an outside evaluation of work. This is particularly important in the long-term, as students as they develop their own niche and interests, and for contextualizing work in terms of the general "real-world" picture. With good performance, they may provide sponsorship for later jobs and projects.

Key challenge: mentor management

First and foremost, mentors should not be over burdened. This will cause burnout to the mentor and lose a very valuable part of the program.

Two ways to address this. Keep demands reasonable, and keep motivation high. Latter comes from mentors seeing they are contributing to something important.

Can we learn from the FIRST kickoff? Keep the mentors drinking the kool-aid

The mentorship program is intended to provide a support-structure within the Challenge Groups that will provide guidance, networks, and knowledge to students within the Grand Challenges Program.

Transfer of contextual experience, long-term perspective--someone to say "this will matter later"

Mentors will be recruited from alumni, faculty, faculty contacts, parents, and the wider Olin network. Alumni mentors are especially valuable since they have first hand knowledge of the Olin experience and resources available to Olin students, as well as the perspective to see which skills have been most important later.

Mentors will fulfill one or both of two roles. First, mentors can advise a small number of students who they meet with, virtually or in person, at least twice a semester. Mentors can also aid a specific challenge group, without necessarily being responsible for the activities of a single student. The mentors will also serve a key role in evaluating student learning plans and projects. To ensure even mentorship levels, mentees will provide feedback to their mentors on a yearly basis, with each student having the option to maintain their current mentor or change to a different one.

A mentor is a crucial part of the program since they will be able to provide context and experience that a student has not had time to acquire. Mentors will also provide students with guidance during the program.

It is suggested that the mentors and students remain in contact throughout the semester; however, it is understood that some mentors (alumni inclued) may not have as much time to devote to the program as a student would like. In this case a student should seek out multiple mentors, still leaving one mentor as a "lead mentor" who will be responsible for the student's evaluation. Meetings with mentors should be flexible and fit both the mentor and mentee's schedule. Alumni may request virtual meetings, while more local mentors may request on campus meetings.