GSoC Mentor Expectations
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#GSoC is primarialy a mentorship program, and we take the
#responsibilities implied by that seriously. Towards that end, here
#are some of the expectations we have of our mentors. If you would
#like to work with us in GSoC as a mentor, you should be comfortable
#with these. We've had very good experiences here for the past two
#years, and this is mostly in the interest of making things a bit
#more formal (in the sense of "official", not "stuffy").
#
# * Qualifications: Generally speaking, mentors are expected to be
# known members of the community who've demonstrated an ability to
# work colaboratively with others, as well as a good command of the
# ideas and technology involved. Note that mentors sign up for a
# general "pool" at first, but will only be assigned to specific
# projects they're interested in (you are not expected to be a master
# of everything in computer science!).
#
# * Mentors are expected to be in regular contact with their
# students. In this context "regular" should probably mean every
# other workday or so, but this contact needn't be particularly
# involved. The objective here is simply to ensure the student's
# actively engaged on an ongoing basis, and a set of diffs or such
# would be plenty. The mentor should feel free to determine the form
# of this communication, as long as it's sufficient to ensure the
# student's actively engaged.
#
# * Mentors may roll that communication up into regular, public
# updates by their students. If students are posting code to a public
# repository (with notifications) as often as they'd otherwise be
# mailing diffs to their mentor, that's probably sufficient.
#
# * Mentors should acknowledge such communication, each time, even if
# it's just along the lines of "got it, thanks". It may well not be
# appropriate to do a detailed review of each day's work (actually,
# most likely that won't be appropriate in most cases), but mentors
# should be giving at least that level of positive reinforcement to
# their students.
#
# * While those actual reviews needn't happen daily, they must
# happen, probably weekly or better. It's important that the mentors
# ensure their students aren't headed off into the weeds, even if the
# student doesn't _think_ they have any questions.
#
# * Mentors should, of course, be prepared to respond quickly to
# actual questions from their students. In some sense this is the
# main job of the mentor, and I don't believe we've had any problems
# here in our past three years participating, but it's worth stating
# explicitly.
#
# * Mentors should inform the project admins (Anthony and Devon) of
# any problems communicating with the student, or indication that
# they're not actively engaged, as soon as they come up. We should
# never get to a point where an admin hears "I haven't seen any work
# from my student in two weeks...". In many cases, just getting other
# people involved can help the student correct any lapses before
# things become a crisis.
#
# * We will be requiring regular status reports from the students to
# the mailing list again this year, sent on a weekly basis. Mentors
# should make sure these happen on time, and contact students who
# miss any scheduled reports right away.
#
# * Mentors will complete their midterm and final evaluation forms on
# time, and will remind their students to do the same. Any problems
# getting their own forms completed, or reported or observed problems
# from their students, should be reported to the organization admins
# as soon as possible.
#
#Students will also be assigned a backup mentor for each project. The
#qualifications are about the same, but the expectations are a
#different.
#
# * Backup mentors are not expected to have the same level of day to
# day interaction with their students (although they're certainly
# welcome to do so). They are expected to follow along well enough
# that they can pick up the role in a relatively short amount of
# time, with minimal disruption to the student, in the even that the
# primary mentor gets hit by the proverbial mentor-hunting bus.
#
# * If the backup mentor notices a lapse in communication, they
# should get in touch with both the primary mentor and the org admins
# to discuss the problem immediately.
#
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