Life to Eagle Advisor

[artjrk]

How does your Troop utilize this role? Advisor, Mentor, Required? I would like to hear what other Troops do before going into ours. I don't want it to be a debate into if we are right or wrong I just would like to see how other Troops deal with this stage in a Scout's advancement trail.

[moosetracker]

Before our former COR was our Eagle Advisor.. She was good, she was tough, but fair.. I remember with my son, she was not happy if you came to her to review a fundraiser a few days before the event.. He was working it, but when she looked it over not all the I's & T's were crossed to her satisfaction.. He got a verbal thrashing (which for some reason caused him to go from always being scared of her, to really liking her..) Then he had to run around getting in missed things like the Money-raising form to council, and signatures for something I can't remember maybe same said form.. Some other items..

 

Now, the scouts are told they can have one. They may choose not to have one. If they wish for one they can then ask anyone (other then parent) in the troop to be there advisor, and the Adult has a choice of accepting the task or not, depending on their personal schedule, and if they are comfortable with doing the advising..

[eisely]

Our troop has had such a role for an adult for some time. I performed that function for our troop for about five years.

 

I think that the position has to be pretty well defined. First of all, since there is no such position, that person does not sign anything. I suppose in some close situations the SM or CC might turn to the eagle advisor for his or her opinion, but the eagle advisor has no real authority other than that created by the troop.

 

My main function was to make sure the boys approaching 18 understood the process and to advise them in how to go about it. I did not supercede either the SM or CC in the formal approval capacities, for either the service project or the eagle rank application.

 

The one thing I did pro actively was to act as a collection point for the references to ensure that they all came in and were in turn delivered to the right person at the district level.

 

I also offered an annual briefing for both parents and boys who were entering the process to explain to all of them what was involved. It is hard for me to evaluate the benefit of doing that, but everybody involved found it worthwhile.

[Oak Tree]

Ours is the committee member who will sign the Eagle project proposal. As SM, I won't sign until he has.

 

His primary role is to make sure the Scouts understand the process, and to iterate on the project proposal with them until they have it in a reasonable state to give to the district board. When a Scout earns his Life rank, the L2E Advisor will give the Scout/parents a booklet full of information on how to get to Eagle, some sample project proposals, the links to the district process, etc. Every now and then he'll nudge a Scout to see where he is on the project application.

[Eagle92]

Never heard of such a thing until I got on this site.

[Twocubdad]

Our council requires project proposals on a par with business plan for a SBA loan. I've had Six-Sigma Black Belts scratch their heads over them.

 

Conseqently, the only "Eagle Advisor" function we have is in helping scouts with writing and editing their proposals in such a way that they can get approved by council. Our former Advancement Chair did this, but since he's retired I've taken the job. The same guy who counsels Drafting MB works with the boys on any drawings which may be needed (and usually finishes the MB in the process.)

 

I used to spend anywhere from six to 10 hours meeting with the scout helping him to develop the proposal and then editing and polishing. Of course it was not uncommon for the Scout to spend 25 or 30 hours at it. Over the past few years we've created a proposal template which includes detailed instructions for each section, examples from past, approved proposals, and cut-and-paste samples for things like MSDSs and safety guidelines commonly used materials and tools.

 

I've found the template cuts my time involvement in a proposal easily in half. I can give it to a Scout on a thumb drive or CD, spend an hour walking them through the important stuff and they can generally come back with an 80-90% proposal.

 

But getting the project proposal past the council committee is the only thing we do for Life Scouts we don't do for everyone else.