A New Beginning for a Long-Standing Mentorship Program (Faculty Panel)

location_on Location: Kaiser B

(Links to papers / posters are embargoed until 4/7)

All times in Eastern Time Zone

• assignment_ind Wickham, K., Fulton, K., Johnson, M., Koren, M. & Gulli, S. “ A New Beginning for a Long-Standing Mentorship Program ”
  Students report significant anxiety about making a successful transition from high school to college, so we consider our first-year mentoring program to be an important recruitment and retention strategy. It attracts and helps acclimate first-year students, and it builds community and goodwill among our returning students who serve as mentors. This panel will describe our mentoring program (65 or 70 mentors for roughly 350 entering students per year), including its leadership (a 10-member Honors Student Council), its schedule of activities (recruiting and training mentors, leading 6 or 7 summer “overnight orientations” for entering students, assisting with Move-In, organizing and leading a three-day “Welcome Days” schedule, and maintaining connections with mentees through the first year), and its primary benefits to both entering students and mentors. Key lessons gained from the challenges of COVID and the “new beginning” of the regular mentoring program in Fall 2021 include striking a balance between required, informational programming and semi-optional social and fun programming, encouraging mentors to use their own creativity and knowledge of their mentees to direct and alter activities, and focusing above all on building personal relationships—both between council members and mentors and between mentors and mentees.