Our group has mentors for all new students. The MGs volunteer to be mentors and our coordinator assigns us to a student before classes start.

We have a formal "meet and greet" beforfe classes and get to know each other if we haven't already been in contact. We are supposed to contact the student (we call them "seedlings") several times during classes to see if they have any questions or problems and then at least monthly during the first year until graduation. The student can contact us at any time also. Some students work with their mentor on volunteer assignments and some work with other MGs.

So far I haven't heard about any problems with the system. I'll ask our coordinator tomorrow.

Sandy

Our coordinator asks what kind of glitches are you referring to?
Sandy

Hmmm, don't know exactly.
I guess I was wondering if anyone had had a "don't do this!" moment with their mentor program. We're trying to get a mentoring program started in ours and so far things are running well.
I do like the "contact at least once monthly" idea. Don't think our program has that but the folks who signed up to mentor are a very gregarious bunch. Keeping in contact shouldn't be an issue this year.
"Seedlings"? Love it! : )
Thanks for the input.

Since nothing of consequence has changed in our program, I guess there have been no major issues. I think that at first there was some problem with some mentors not keeping in contact often enough but that seems to be ok now. And at first some mentors would give their "seedling" a gift at graduation while others didn't. The coordinator suggested that these gifts be given in private if we want to do that, but it was not a requirement, and she sort of discouraged it. It seems to be working well.

Sandy

This next class will have different mentors. We will meet them before they need us and then schedule a day on the help desk and mentor anyone of the new class who signs up for that day - limit 2. Last year the mentors failed to follow through with the help desk training because some of them "hate it" We also had a mentor and mentee who could not stand each other. This plan sounds better to me.

Penny

Thanks for the input Penny.
I've been seeing some things we need to tweak for our next intern class. Some of our mentors this year haven't been very responsive to their interns. Sort of " I managed to get through the class why can't you" attitude. Definitely not what the mentor idea is about. The MG's with the above attitude have had it addressed, one of them quit. That's fine with me, there was another MG who wanted to participate and she has turned out to be a gem!
Always a work in progress isn't it?