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.
#