Team Mentors and Course Advisors

Click here for a list of our Spring 2019 stellar course mentors and advisors.

Interested in mentoring a team or advising in the Fall Semester?  Or up your game and get the full experience as an alumni student (remote location is fine).  Click here.

Mentors:

Mentors are an extension of the teaching team responsible for the success or failure of a team.
In this class, the local mentor supplements and complements the DOD/IC sponsor. Optimally, mentors add additional perspective about the overall business model, potential dual-use of the product/service, potential commercial off-the-shelf solutions to the problem, and additional contacts in other branches of the DOD/IC for beneficiary discovery. Mentors play an active role in weekly coaching of a specific team. Successful mentor engagement is at a minimum of an hour a week, and typically 2-3 hours per week, throughout the course. Ideally, the teams will share their weekly presentations with their mentor the day or evening before the class and get their feedback. After the class, teams share the results of that presentation and their plan for the week ahead. In addition to watching the weekly video lectures and staying current (or ahead) on the readings in the syllabus, the mentors will also want to track and comment on their team’s progress periodically in their respective blogs.

Advisors:

If you can’t commit to the time required to be a mentor, you can still contribute as an advisor. You would act as a pooled resource for all teams and will respond to an email within 24 hours. Teams can use their advisors as sources for beneficiary discovery contacts, domain-specific questions, and questions about the business model.

Military Liaisons:

Military liaisons help student teams interact effectively with their DOD/IC problem sponsors. The ideal Military Liaison is a mid to senior grade active duty military officer or senior non-commissioned officer with some expertise and/or background in the problem area their student teams are addressing as well as a familiarity with the agency presenting the problem. Reservists and National Guard members also make exceptional Military Liaisons.

Alumni Students:

Have you ever wanted to learn how startups are built? Would you like to serve your country and help actively solve military problems? We are offering a limited number of slots for alumni to take the course, working on and alongside the student teams. Alumni students would need to commit to being logged in during the course times (6:30-9pm ET) throughout the course and to actively participate in student team meetings. You would also have direct connections with the military units whose problem you are solving. Being online during the course hours (Thursday 6:30-9) January 10 through Thursday, April 11th with no class on Thursday, March 14); total commitment is expected to be 5-10 hours a week. Once selected for the course, alumni students will audit the course which requires a $535 fee; successful completion of the course will include the addition of this course to their Duke official transcript as well as an MD5/Department of Defense certification of service. Alumni students must have completed at least their undergraduate degree from Duke. NOTE: this is NON-credit for alums and cannot be converted to school credit, nor does this constitute admission to a grad program at Duke.