In her room strung with white Christmas lights, senior Katie Murphy meets with her mentor group just about every week. In the cozy setting, she asks the question, “So how are you guys?” and the answers range from worries over midterms to cafteria food, to concerns about staying at Guilford. This is just one example of the mentoring program working at its best, but there are many other students who haven’t met with a mentor in months or never even received one.In 1994, the mentoring program was set up for incoming football players to learn how to deal with time management, road trips, classes, etc., from an older student who went through it. It then grew to include all incoming athletes in 1997. The success of the program was motivation for it to become a required two-credit course for all first-year students in 1998.
The objective of the program is for first-years to establish a trusting relationship with a mentor when they first arrive to campus. However, there are glitches. One occurs when a first-year student does not have a mentor at all.
Depending on who you ask, first years range their comments about the mentoring program from “I love my mentor, it made being here so much easier,” to “Mentor? I was supposed to have a mentor?” There are a large number of first-years who don’t have a mentor or who have only met with them once. The level of commitment within the program is not equally balanced. With over 100 mentors and 330 incoming students, confusion runs pretty high.
First-year Alena Fast feels frustration with the program, “The mentoring program is a big joke,” she said. “There are a few people with good mentors who have actually met with them a lot since the beginning of school. I’ve met with mine once. There are others who haven’t even met with a mentor yet. It’s ridiculous that people are receiving credit for not doing any work at all.”
First- year Jacquelyn Bean has never even met her mentor. “I feel like I missed out on some first-year experience, and I don’t really understand why.”
In order to help in eliminating these glitches, the First-Year Program put out a survey through the mentoring program to find out how to improve the first-year program, inculding the mentoring program.
Murphy says, “I think the mentoring program would be more successful if expectations of the involved students (both mentors and mentees) were more explicit. There needs to be more feedback between mentors and the program coordinators to show that the work is being done.”
On the same note, First-Year Director Shelly Crisp also has ideas for the program. “We want the program to work well for everyone. One way we thought of doing this was by grouping people by interest. That way we give them a comfort zone. On the other hand, we want to mix it up and give students an opportunity to get to know knew people in their groups.”
Crisp doesn’t want to lose focus on what’s important. “Our hope is that the mentors establish a friendship and help first years out” she said. “Friendship has to be built, and it has to be natural.”
In looking for feedback, the program is working out how to keep that focus and make it stronger.
Murphy highlights the positives: “Don’t become a mentor for the credit hour but for the positive things you can do to help others,” she said. “Each of us can learn so much from one another.”