Mentor Me, Mentor You

  • Liz Gee: School of Management & Science, LCF
  • Heather Pickard: School of Management & Science, LCF
  • Howard Bailey: School of Management & Science, LCF

This Presentation starts at 14:30 in room T1101. Back to Parallel Session 3

Brief description of session and activities

20 minute presentation of the mentoring scheme devised with the help of Curriculum Development Funding on the Fashion Management programme in 2014.   This small scale peer-to-peer mentoring programme was piloted in Career Planning (a series of non-credit bearing extra-curricular employability activities) and in stage 4 Fashion Enterprise Management (FEM) curriculum unit.

The programme aims were to: Enhance the first, second and third year student experience by devising resources that support the tutor team in embedding a mentoring programme. The aim that there would be overall benefits in the form of additional support for the mentees, co-creation opportunities and the development of skills for the mentors   Year 2 and year 3 students could volunteer as mentors and so collaborate with year 1 or 2 peers in one of two ways:

  1. Year 3 placement and or intern experiences to aid year 1 or 2 students’ career planning
  2. BAFM year 2 students to share their experiences of operating a start up business as part of FEM with BAFM year 1 students.

A brief and materials were designed by an HPL using the funding who then hosted a ‘train-the-tutor’ session with the delivery team.

The delivery team of tutors recruited and trained the student mentors. The HPL hosted a summative workshop to evaluate programme strengths and areas for development (delivery team and mentors) and provided an opportunity for mentors to gain a nationally accredited qualification in Mentoring Skills   The scheme was seen as a success by student and staff participants. Some improvements were identified for future delivery and it is hoped that the impact will be wider in future years.  

Will students be involved in the session? If so how?

Yes. Student mentees and mentors will talk about how the mentoring programme helped their personal development.  Staff involved in the mentoring delivery will also highlight the benefits to their own personal development.  

What will participants take away from the session?

  • Ideas for how mentoring techniques could be used on their courses to foster co-creation opportunities.
  • Resources for training in mentoring skills can be taken away or accessed at a later date.