Corporate Mentorship and Student Satellite Projects
Experience is one of the main factors in creating a successful space (or any other) project. However, this is one thing that students, by definition, lack. An effective way around this issue is to invite corporate and academic experts into a project to advise and assist the student engineers.
Mentorship has grown to become a core value at the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. But it took some time to get that way. One issue is that a mentorship relationship has to be carefully managed to get the most out of it. Another is that some of the best mentors at COSGC are former students; the longer a student organization like COSGC exists, the more alumni resources it will produce.
Bruce Davis (DANDE structural lead / I&T manager) and I noticed that other organizations weren’t taking advantage of this resource as well as COSGC was, so we wrote a paper for the 22nd AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites. The paper illustrates the need in the industry for student-mentor relationships, describes some of CSGC’s best practices for creating and maintaining mentorship ties, and provides some success stories.
“The Creation and Impact of Corporate Mentorship on Student-Led Satellite Projects”