Abstract
Over the past year, strong relationships have developed between a team of students at the University of Colorado and industry mentors. These students, who are participating in the University Nanosat 5 Program, have found that professional mentorship is a critical part of the learning experience. It has resulted in an increased motivation to succeed, and a more comprehensive level of real-world thinking when designing satellites. The participating professionals also find the experience rewarding and go out of their way to accommodate student needs. At the corporate level, involvement with student projects provides company exposure to rising engineers, networking with other participating companies and in some cases flight heritage of products under development. This effort and support towards education promotes long-term growth for the aerospace industry. The University of Colorado team has planned from the beginning to pair each subsystem discipline with an industry mentor. As a result, over a dozen professionals are involved in the project. They provide the availability of testing facilities, confirmation of analytical results, and access to flight-rated hardware not commonly available to student teams. Most importantly, early and ongoing guidance by mentors helps students generate logical and realistic requirements; a process critical to mission success not always appreciated by young engineers. This paper describes the philosophy and implementation used by the University of Colorado student satellite team in establishing professional mentorships and presents the business perspective from a participating corporation. In addition, it proposes that this program-wide methodology can be beneficial to other university teams working in technical fields.
Presentation Slides
The Creation and Impact of Corporate Mentorship on Student-Led Satellite Projects
Over the past year, strong relationships have developed between a team of students at the University of Colorado and industry mentors. These students, who are participating in the University Nanosat 5 Program, have found that professional mentorship is a critical part of the learning experience. It has resulted in an increased motivation to succeed, and a more comprehensive level of real-world thinking when designing satellites. The participating professionals also find the experience rewarding and go out of their way to accommodate student needs. At the corporate level, involvement with student projects provides company exposure to rising engineers, networking with other participating companies and in some cases flight heritage of products under development. This effort and support towards education promotes long-term growth for the aerospace industry. The University of Colorado team has planned from the beginning to pair each subsystem discipline with an industry mentor. As a result, over a dozen professionals are involved in the project. They provide the availability of testing facilities, confirmation of analytical results, and access to flight-rated hardware not commonly available to student teams. Most importantly, early and ongoing guidance by mentors helps students generate logical and realistic requirements; a process critical to mission success not always appreciated by young engineers. This paper describes the philosophy and implementation used by the University of Colorado student satellite team in establishing professional mentorships and presents the business perspective from a participating corporation. In addition, it proposes that this program-wide methodology can be beneficial to other university teams working in technical fields.
