The Role of Mentors in Student Innovation Competitions and Programs

Many students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields seek to expand their technical knowledge, develop an innovative mindset, and build teamwork and communication skills. To respond to this need, many higher education institutions and foundations have broadened their co-curricular program offerings to include design challenges, hackathons, startup competitions, customer discovery labs, and pitch competitions that are designed to support and benefit student innovators. Faculty mentors are responsible for being available to students to answer questions, guide student thinking, and advise student teams to facilitate learning. For these students to gain crucial knowledge and at least be educationally successful in these programs, a mentor possessing key traits and using certain strategies is proven to be highly influential. While much research supports the importance and benefit of STEM students' participation in these programs, literature discussing the effective strategies for mentoring students participating in these programs remains limited. Exploring the best mentoring practices will provide insight into how to support and prepare students for innovation competitions and their upcoming careers as well as catalyze their entrepreneurial minds for future success. Based on a series of interviews with experienced mentors of innovation competitions and programs, this paper presents a set of best practices for mentoring student innovation teams.