Posted by Russell Watt in Draft Mentor’s Guidelines For Discussion

Posted by Katherine Dedul in Draft Mentor’s Guidelines For Discussion

Posted by Adam W. in Draft Mentor’s Guidelines For Discussion
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Sorry for the delay, but here they are. I’d appreciate any input on them as I think it’s key that we get this fairly right. However these can be amended down the road if we find they need tweaking. :)

I feel like I’m missing something, so if my feeling is correct, kindly propose additions to the below.

Tentatively, this will remain open for two weeks for discussion (so July 14th), but if there’s loads of discussion I will extend it (and make a subsequent announcement).

-Kat

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1. Per Lerner Bill #2, mentors generally must be members of the club for a minimum of three months. Exceptions must be approved by the Academy Commandant and will be determined under the following criteria:

a) Posting Effort, this includes both the frequency and quality of the posts (General guidelines are located in the syllabus: https://www.star-fleet.com/acad/syllabus/). Generally mentors must be able to maintain a consistent presence on the ship they have agreed to mentor on.

b) In the opinion of the CO of the ship they have request to mentor on, they would be appropriate to be assigned as such.

c) In the case of the Academy, the ship’s CO, XO and CNS have requested this individual be graduated from the Academy to Department Head and such a request is approved by the Academy Commandant upon review of the cadet’s graduation evaluation.

1. Mentors must commit to contacting new members assigned to them within 72 hours of them being assigned. If they are on LOA and it is unmarked, the Academy reserves the right to re-assign that new member to another member who is not currently on LOA. The recommended welcome email is available on the resources page (to be created).

They need to copy the Academy on the e-mail they send.

1. Mentors must also periodically check in with their mentored members, if only to touch base and make sure there are no issues to address. Some example emails are found in the resources section.

2. Generally, there are three ways a mentor may leave the program:

a) Requesting to be removed.

b) AWOL

c) Removal by the Academy Commandant for breach of the above-noted guidelines.

I don’t think the guidelines above cover everything. I would change this wording to give the Commandant more flexibility. The mentor should be removed if they violate the terms of service in a way that has an impact on their mentorship relationship, for example.

I haven’t gone back and compared this with Daniel’s bill, but there may be more guidelines of what a mentor should be doing in there that are missing here off the top of my head.

Reads good to me, Kat.

A question, does someone who is a mentor on one ship automatically become a mentor on all their ships?

That’s actually a good question. I’m open either way, does any one else have another opinion about this?

My thinking is … it is designed to meet the needs of the new member and anything to make them feel uncomfortable should be avoided.
A brand new member who chooses to go to a mainstream ship as an Ensign and bypass the Academy and asks for a mentor. A player who plays CO, XO, DHs elsewhere in the club and has been in a host of OOC positions (not to mention receiver of multiple RPing awards), but whose character is a fellow ensign on their ship is assigned as their mentor. The new member’s only experience in STF is their ship, not anything else in the club, and don’t necessarily know that Fluffin McFluffin’s player was a former President / multiple term FCOMM/winner of Best CO multiple times/etc, all they know is their mentor is a player whose character is an Ensign (and who has an awful awful character name), just like them. Would this be a positive experience for the new member?
Maybe a player is happy to be a mentor on most of their ships, but on a ship that they are a JO on, they just want to be able to enjoy posting without that additional responsibility.
An Academy Graduate promoted to DH/Lt JG on Academy, also joins up a new character on a mainstream ship … considering they’ve just been around for 3-4 months, do they want/need the additional responsibility of mentoring out there when they are really still learning how to mentor?

I’ll agree with this point. It’s a bit imtimidating when you start of mentoring in the Academy as a promoted cadet, even if you are a really good choice for it. That person shouldn’t automatically need to mentor in the main fleet as well until they feel comfortable enough to do so.

Aside from that I’d say a person is either mentoring in the main fleet or they aren’t. It’s easier to keep track of that way and personally I don’t think it matters what my role is on the ship or which ship it is as the mentoring aspect is quite different from roleplaying.

My opinion is the member doing the mentoring should not be automatically added as mentor to new ships they join without their approval/agreement. Of course, people joining an Academy ship as DH should automatically know they are going to be a mentor to their cadets, so that is outside this comment. :)

Another question, does something need to be said that 2nd character only ships and x-fleet ships are excluded?

Good point. What are your thoughts of adding it to section 1? So Section 1 would read:

1. Per Lerner Bill #2, mentors generally must be members of the club for a minimum of three months. Exceptions must be approved by the Academy Commandant and will be determined under the following criteria:

a) Posting Effort, this includes both the frequency and quality of the posts (General guidelines are located in the syllabus: https://www.star-fleet.com/acad/syllabus/). Generally mentors must be able to maintain a consistent presence on the ship they have agreed to mentor on.

b) In the opinion of the CO of the ship they have request to mentor on, they would be appropriate to be assigned as such.

Should be “requested” not “request” to read correctly. This leads into the question if mentors are tied to specific ships or not in the main fleet. If not this wording could mean tracking down the opinion of ten CO’s. I don’t think all CO’s are necessarily the best judge of how good of a mentor someone would be, as we do have CO’s sometimes who are themselves not great as mentors or who are pretty absent.

So I’d rather have opinion be that of an experienced mentor than the CO of the ship where the mentoring is happening.

c) In the case of the Academy, the ship’s CO, XO and CNS have requested this individual be graduated from the Academy to Department Head and such a request is approved by the Academy Commandant upon review of the cadet’s graduation evaluation.

It may be possible that the request could be granted after two of the three recommend promotion to DH. If you agree that that could be possible, then perhaps the wording could be tweaked.

d) The Academy shall ideally seek to identify mentors for each ship in the main fleet that accepts new members. It is noted that Department Heads on Academy ships are automatically mentors for cadets assigned to their department.

How is this a criteria for it being okay for someone to mentor after less than three months? I don’t think “d” belongs with “a”, “b”, and “c.”

Adam

I think that should do it.

Question number 3 … There is NO 3rd question :)

-Russell

Let me start with basic questions.

What is the objective of this? Guidelines for the mentors program? Guidelines for the mentors?

What kind of thing is this? An academy policy? A guideline that isn’t a set of formal rules?

I want to understand better what this is supposed to be before offering feedback on whether or not it is what it is supposed to be.

Adam

It would form a policy at the Academy level. Sorry, I should have specified that. Given previously written language, I’ll change “guideline” to “policy” or “mandate” in subsequent drafts and of course what gets added to our policies page.

It is the general rule of how the program runs, how people can expect the Academy to administer the program and rule on situations based upon this.

-Kat

-Russ