​Time for a mentorship makeover

Many of the Class of 2018 made the long trek a week and a half ago back to East Campus and the Academic Resource Center to declare their majors. These students will be matched with major advisors and embark on a journey to deepen their understanding and experiences of their chosen fields. As changes are proposed to the undergraduate advising model, including one to allow students to retain the same advisor for all four years, we believe a transformation of our undergraduate advising and mentorship models is in order.

Much of this dissatisfaction arises from assuming that every advisor will be a mentor as well. We believe that advisors should guide us through the routines of academic life, and that many here at Duke are very good at what they do. Advisors should help us through enrollment and field general questions. They should direct us to the program directors and Directors of Undergraduate Studies who can help us further explore our interests.

Mentors, however, transform these routine academic processes into engaging, exciting human pursuits. In the classroom or over coffee, they help us see the meaning of our studies beyond course requirements and GPAs. They help us bridge the gap between the classroom and the world with theses and capstone projects. Mentors help us understand what we can do with what we have learned, helping us hone in on where we want our lives to go.

Mentorship could greatly change the undergraduate experience, giving greater vision and perspective to students—not to mention becoming a big selling point for the University. First, working in this relationship with undergraduates must be incentivized for mentors. Graduate students, professors and staff—while clearly passionate about what they do and likely eager to enable others—must face the reality of prioritizing their own publications and research. However, an institutional push to reward mentorship work just as much, whether with an expansion of the existing STAR Advisor Award or integration into the tenure system, would help encourage a widespread mentorship program.

Second, mentorship needs to reach beyond Duke. In the business world, firms such as KPMG have modeled their services around 5+ and 10+ year mentorship programs that pair clients with mentors of that many years experience. For students, these mentors would ideally provide experiences and advice at different glimpses ahead of where a student currently is or where their interests might take them. Such a program could be tested on a small scale through applications, merit scholars or by professor recommendations. From business paths to medicine, academia or politics, this model allows students to maintain and benefit from the tailored advice of strategically timed relationships with faculty, professionals, alumni and others.

A robust “family” of mentors would hopefully become a life-building exploration for some of who they are and who they want to become. What we are proposing is a leap for the University. We hope to see a long-term, long-range mentorship program one day perhaps sparked through the new curriculum’s mentored scholarly experience. But until then, students must seek their own opportunities. Find those professors whose interests match your own. Use your FLUNCH. Send that email to a program director. Above all, four years in undergraduate are too short to be shy. We attend a university with some of the best faculty, staff and students in the world. All it takes to have their advice, to get to know them and to begin forming fruitful lifelong connections, is to ask.

The Editorial Board did not reach quorum for this editorial.