The College of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin teaches and mentors students who will enter the workplace with competence and confidence. The College provides students with the opportunity to develop into independent, creative professional engineers.
Mentoring in the College of Engineering facilitates a student’s personal and career development through networking and the sharing of known resources, expertise, skills, perspectives and proficiencies by an experienced individual. The College of Engineering's web-based mentoring process guides a student through:
- assessing her/his development needs,
- finding a suitable mentor from a dynamic database of alumni and friends of the College
- developing a network of mentors to assist with career guidance, major and career exploration and other related issues, and
- creating a mentoring agreement to guide the mentoring relationship.
Mentoring also provides the opportunity for the experienced individual to further enhance his/her skill and knowledge areas by continuously reassessing and building upon those areas.
What Does the Mentoring Program Involve?
The mentoring program is set up so that mentors and mentees set up limits and negotiate the communication strategy so that the process fits each other's schedules and needs. The process is mentee-driven with mentees initiating contact with mentors and initiating the negotiation of the mentoring relationship. Items to be negotiated include the following:
- Frequency of communications: one time (for a one-time question), weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or every six weeks
- Length of mentoring relationship: two months to 12 months
- Means of communication: e-mail, phone, in-person, online chat
Below are estimates of the time involved in various aspects of the mentoring program process. The time actually spent mentoring or being mentored will vary based on the questions and communications.
Approximately 30 minutes: Entering your biography and your learning descriptions (for mentors: what you can provide to the relationship; for mentees: what you want to learn about or discuss).
Approximately 15 minutes: Negotiating the mentoring relationship. The mentor and the mentee, through a web-based and e-mail based negotiation process, determine the level of communications expected in the mentoring relationship.
Approximately 15 minutes: Feedback and evaluation phase at periodic times during the mentoring relationship and at the conclusion of agreed upon mentoring period.