Mentoring
The biggest challenge for an mentoring programs is organization, especially with a large student body.How do you facilitate a program with 600,800, or 1000 students?
peter,
Honestly, everyone benefits from a mentor. Yet, the students at risk are the priority.
Ron Hansen, Ed. D.
i think the best approach for mentoring a large student body is identifying the students who are in dier need of mentoring and focus on just that group
Our instructors are also responsible for mentoring their current students. Our student services department also plays an intergral role in mentoring. Each student is contacted monthly to reiterate what a great job they are doing. They also address any concerns, personal or educational that the student is experiencing. Sometimes the students just want to know that someone has their best interest at heart and care about them. Postive feedback is a wonderful thing!
The group approach seems to be the best as the students are fimilar with other students in the group and it makes the process smoother.
Robert,
Wonderful!I love how all staff is linked at the front end of the enrollment process.
Dr. Larry Banks
With our school, there is a newly formed mentor program for helping students who could not meet the initial testing requirements. Instructors are asked if they would like to be a part of this program, if they accept, they are given a brief training on how they are to help. The mentoring is tied to a six week course the students have to pass if they wish to be enrolled. It covers all the basic skills a student needs to have. As this is a free program, I think it may be a good way of encouraging some students to try who might have given up previously. They know there will be this resource (mentoring) at school to help them through it.
David,
I think it is great, that you are doing informal mentoring. What would happen if the mentoring had a purpose and was intentional? This is the idea.
Dr. Larry Banks
Our campus is not currently using a formal mentoring program, probably due to our student population. I do observe and participate in informal mentoring. By focusing on students and their challenges in all phases of their college experience at our school, I've noticed the instructors, administrators, etc. informally mentoring students through taking an interest in their class success as well as their personal life challenges. One advantage of informal mentoring seems to be that students are allowed to gravitate toward the staff members they are more comfortable with rather than being assigned to a designated mentor. I'm sure that formal programs allow for changes and reassignments but my comments relate to positive observations from the informal environment at our campus.
As head of one the safety programs i have found that desigantion of group leaders durinmg a fire drill will help with mentoring a successful menntorship via the fire drill itself.
Wonderful! Mentor can make a huge difference in retention. Especially monitor during the first two terms.
Dr. Larry Banks
We implement that process of having an instructor be assigned as a menotr to a group of new students and monitor their progress and assist them during their college career.
That is a big problem. I might suggest that the school enlists club events for students to get involved. That way one faculty member can over see a large number of students. Or, assigning students to a faculty advisor.
