First, a quiz: What do Odysseus and the Circle U. alliance have in common?
The answer: They both know that a mentor can be a powerful source of guidance and inspiration to a young person.
However, where Odysseus left his infant son Telemachus in a rather asymmetric relationship with the older – and aptly named – Mentor, Circle U. has chosen to emphasise peer mentoring, where students help other students adapt to university life.
But even mentors can need mentoring. So in order to assist those alliance staff members who work on university mentoring programmes, Circle U. has now established an online resource with a range of different building blocks which can be useful if you are setting up a mentoring programme, or if you are wanting to improve an existing one:
- Communications strategies on how to recruit and train mentors
- A handbook for mentors
- An example of a mentoring agreement
- Ideas for how to evaluate your mentoring scheme
- …and many others
Peer mentoring London style
Most of the inspiration for Circle U’s new framework for mentoring activities comes from the wellbeing service at KCL’s Student Union (KCLSU). They are a student-led group which has been working to improve peer mentoring since 2018.
PhD candidate Julia Haas is the founder and manager of KCLSU Wellbeing. She started the service after noticing that student leaders were eager to create a community of good wellbeing, but that they did not have consistent support and structures to do this.
“We found that peer mentoring can improve the transition into university by building a sense of belonging. Because of this, the university funded a Peer Support Coordinator to undertake this project”.
She is excited that Circle U. aims to promote peer mentoring schemes at the alliance universities and adds,
“Every peer mentoring programme should be unique to meet the specific needs of the student community it is working to reach. But despite the differences, we’ve also discovered that there are many commonalities. We believe that the lessons we’ve learnt across KCL can also provide building blocks for other institutions who want to use peer mentoring as a means to improve transition as well as the overall student wellbeing”.
Join the network – and the online mentoring event
To support the dissemination of peer mentoring strategies, Circle U. staff members have established a community of practice. The network is open to everyone – both those who have experience with peer mentoring as well as those who are venturing out into the subject for the first time.
The first members have already joined the network and some of them had a chance to meet at the recent National Conference on Diversity in Aarhus.
“It was really motivating to present our work to such an engaged group from a diverse range of professional backgrounds and experience levels. We discovered that we share similar challenges and were able to consider what we can learn from one another going forward”, said Victoria Summersgill and Lottricia Millett of KCLSU.
Adds Martin Pors Knudsen of the Aarhus University Counselling and Support Centre,
“It was inspiring to learn about the mentoring schemes at KCL, and I expect that we will be able to learn a lot from the Circle U. mentoring network and improve the mentoring schemes we use – for students with disabilities as well as for the student body in general”.
