Overview

A mentor is a guide.  A resource who paves the way to success, and derives satisfaction from helping others succeed. Your role as mentor is to inspire, encourage, and support your students, and contribute to their personal development and student experience. 


Frequently Asked Questions

  • What am I expected to do? Mentors are expected to provide their student with about one to two hours of support and interaction per week.  This interaction will take place via Chronus, email and other web tools (for example, instant messaging) or face-to-face, as appropriate.  Mentors should work with their students to determine what kind of support will be most useful.  The focus of this program is the period of transition and settling into university in the mentees' first semester.
  • How long will the commitment be? We ask our mentors to make commitments of one semester.  This program will kick off in Orientation, with training for mentors in the week or two prior.
  • Are there any potential risks?  No.  It is not appropriate for mentors to engage in any business transactions; instead, the relationship should only involve the flow of general information and support.  Whilst it can be useful for you to share some information about your own experiences, we ask you to focus on the positive aspects (ie. your learnings); we do not expect you to share any upsetting or deeply personal information.
  • Relationship is not going well or I am concerned about mentorship, what do I do?  We encourage letting the student know about the situation and contact the Admin immediately.  We will provide our full support to resolve the situation in a positive and satisfactory manner.

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Mentor DO's

  1. Commit the required amount of time and effort.
  2. Take responsibility to initiate the relationship.
  3. Set aside time for the mentoring process and honour all meetings.
  4. Invite the students to meetings or activities, as appropriate.  Schedule get-togethers with planned topics.
  5. Be flexible on meeting times and places (including online).
  6. Keep in regular contact with your mentees, and be responsive when they contact you.
  7. Keep information that your student has shared with you confidential.  If something concerning the student needs to be discussed with others, it should first be discussed within the mentoring relationship.
  8. Establish open and honest communication and a forum for idea exchange.
  9. Foster creativity and independence.  Help build self-confidence and offer encouragement.
  10. Above all, LISTEN.

Mentor DON'Ts

  1. Try to give advice on everything or go beyond the mentoring role (eg. provide counselling or careers advice).
  2. Encourage student to be totally dependent upon you.
  3. Provide your personal history, problems, animosities, successes, failures, etc unless they are constructive contributions.
  4. Be too busy when the student needs your support.  If you do not have time, give students a heads up, so that they know when they can reach you.
  5. Criticise UQ or any person (staff, student, guest, affiliate) in the university.