The Mentorship program of GMU is an opportunity to provide personal, academic, and/or career-related guidance to students seeking such assistance. The college assigns a mentor to each student after identifying the mentor they would most like to work with. Mentors are provided some guidelines and suggestions based on the grow model on how to make their interaction with the student more and more effective and add value to the entire process aiming to achieve the goals set for each mentee. The effectiveness of such a program is measured through evaluations completed by both mentor and mentee.
Students meet at least twice every semester with their mentors and 4 times throughout the academic year, though the university strongly encourages more frequent meetings. Topics addressed during mentor meetings are many, and may include:
- Setting academic and career goals (What do you want to achieve and when?)
- Assessing past achievements and performance. (What have you done so far to achieve this goal?)
- Identifying bottlenecks. (What are the major constraints in moving forward?)
- Preparing action plan with accountabilities and deadlines (How will you overcome these constraints?)
- Implementing the action plan and monitoring against the set goals.
