Overview

Audience: Subteam leads.

Not just anyone should be a co-op supervisor as we want to give our co-op students the best possible learning experience. The position is unpaid for our co-ops so we really don’t want to waste their time. Peter Teertstra (representing the SDC’s co-op program) has some evaluation criteria for co-op supervisors, but we’d like to do the filtering internally to ensure all our co-ops get a great experience!

Co-op students need to be given fun projects for a good experience. They need to be given lots of mentorship to learn. Essentially it's a lot of time for a supervisor, they should be aware of this commitment. We don't wanna be a "co-op mill" where people come to get the credit and accomplish/learn absolutely nothing bc they spent their time doing boring stuff.

Criteria

Qualifications

The co-op supervisors must possess:

• Previous management experience or demonstrated readiness: Project Manager Promotion Criteria

  • A co-op supervisor must not be learning how to manage for the 1st time on a co-op student

  • Experience as a WARG PM, Industry PM, or WARG lead is preferred

• Be on campus

  • Academic (school) term or employed on UW main campus (e.g. research assistant to a professor)

• Academic term 2A or above

  • SDC requirement is 3A or above but can be waived if WARG deems it applicable.

  • Having multiple strong co-op experiences is important to learn about best practices to ensure the co-op student is successful, generally meeting this requirement requires being an upper year.

Capability

The co-op supervisor must be able to:

• Assign meaningful projects with clear tasks

• Give rapid critical useful feedback

• Quickly understand and root cause any issues the co-op student may encounter

• Teach useful technical concepts and skills

  • Hands on learning for the co-op student

• Commit at least 7 hours per week to supporting the co-op student, which includes daily syncs scheduled for at least 30 minutes

  • The non sync time is spent on support (e.g. planning, research and experimentation, reviews)

  • This is in addition to the time you already spend on WARG (e.g. subteam meetings, flight tests)

  • If there are periods of time where you are not able to fulfill this (e.g. exams), you must find another member to temporarily take these responsibilities

SDC criteria

TODO

To be a co-op supervisor we strongly prefer some managerial experience. This can include being a project manager or subteam lead at WARG. management is hard and we don’t want our managers to be learning for the first time on co-op students. in the past this has usually been subteam leads, but this really isn’t a requirement. Note that for F24 we are expanding into general members and advisors as possible co-op supervisors, but this needs to be backed up with clear signs of readiness.

Co-op Students need to be given fun projects for a good experience. They need to be given lots of mentorship to learn. Essentially it's a lot of time for a supervisor, they should be aware of this commitment. We don't wanna be a "co-op mill" where people come to get the credit and accomplish/learn absolutely nothing bc they spent their time doing boring stuff.

managers need to be able to give critical useful feedback and assign meaningful projects with clear tasks to ensure co-op student learning

some criteria to help leads select who is a reasonable supervisor and who is not qualified enough should be added here.

Being an upper year helps significantly in this because it ensures you have some technical expertise. Having this technical expertise is important so you can have some pieces of knowledge to pass along to your co-op student. Having strong co-op experiences (i.e. Cali) is also useful in supplementing this because you have seen how some tech companies operate so you can teach your co-op student those best practices.

Historically co-op managers should be 3A or above unless they strongly satisfy the above criteria. Someone with technical experience is key for mentorship, a hint of managerial experience is key for tasks.

This criteria essentially encompasses everything in Project Manager Promotion Criteria

while adding in technical expertise, capability to get much more hands on in teaching, etc.

Co-op managers should demonstrate an ability to confidently lead in some way with respect to the team. Be that as being a solid lead, advisor, project manager, etc. but at least in some form is preferred. If you often find yourself unable to make time for WARG meetings then there is no chance you will be able to provide the proper time commitment that a co-op student needs to succeed.