mentoring

in addition to great trips (see last many posts), ATC also works with student teams in designing appropriate technology for people in developing areas.  we’ve worked with at least five different universities (probably closer to ten) and look forward to extending that.  this semester we are working with Michigan State University on two different projects.

when given the chance to be involved in mentoring a team, I jumped at it.  in fact, I took over leading the logistics and mentoring for both teams.  it has been a great way to balance my passion for ATC and what we do with my desire to teach.  in fact, John paid me a huge compliment early on in the process when I wrote feedback to one of the teams and he thought that I had at some point been a teacher based on what he read from me.

mentoring, in this case, primarily means being a sounding board for the students’ concepts and questions, leading them sometimes on technical items, but more often on practical design and project management issues.  I have enjoyed both the technical content and the coaching concerning writing, planning, scope, and other aspects of product development.  just as going to college with all its attendant technical learning often leads to a job with significantly more organizational and paperwork tasks than technology, mentoring the students also carries a fair bit more organization and follow-up than technological input.

the MSU class is ME478 Product Development, led by Dr. Brian Thompson.  I love Dr. Thompson.  he is a complete character and believes in all the right things.  he wants to make the students responsible world citizens and wishes he could make the university as a whole more responsive to developing well-rounded engineers and understanding the university’s role in the world around them.  he has been involved in many projects in the developing world and promotes humanitarian engineering within and outside MSU.  the class endeavors to teach product development (real-world engineering) through a semester-long design project.  it is a class I would love to take, though Professor Thompson does occasionally make fun of “that school in Cambridge.”

sadly, the term is coming to an end soon.  the two teams have symposium presentations coming up this week and the culminating “Design Day” soon after that.  in the coming blog posts, I will go into some detail on the projects and work the students have done.  it’s very cool stuff!

yes, that's Sparty on my Ann Arbor-based blog...