About The Program
Program Overview
Since 2005, the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (FAHSS) offers undergraduate students majoring in Political Science, Psychology, Drama, and History an exciting opportunity to serve as mentors for first-year students within FAHSS in their respective program’s foundational 100 level courses.
Mentors are recruited over the course of the Spring, Intersession, and summer terms to enroll in the Mentorship & Learning course offered in the fall academic term. By way of completing this course and the practicum mentorship portion, Mentors receive a full SOSC or GART (4000) credit towards their academic degrees. Opportunities for growth are endless within the program, as Mentees become Mentors, and Mentors become Senior Mentors.
Mentorship and Learning is rooted in theory and experiential learning. It provides incoming first year students the tools, resources, and space to successfully transition into post-secondary climates, while providing upper year students an opportunity to lead, support, and guide a group of students through the application of theory into practice.
While the program is designed to support incoming first-year students transition into post-secondary system, the Mentorship and Learning Program offers upper year student mentors and senior mentors a deep level of growth, leadership development, and experiential learning opportunities that directly links classroom content to practice. The Mentorship and Learning program aims to provide a deep level of growth for all participants, both mentees and mentors.
Mentorship and Learning is a 4000-level course rooted in putting theory into practice. The program places first-year students within the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences with an upper-year student mentor from their major program to provide support, guidance, and coaching over the course of their transition to university.
The program operates out of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. It runs annually over the course of the Fall academic term and ends at the end of the Fall term. Mentors will be required to attend weekly course lectures, as well as the weekly practicum lectures (time varies on timetable.)
Research has indicated that students, both mentees and mentors, benefit deeply from the mentorship they give and receive over the course of their time in the program. Mentorship and Learning provides tangible, hands-on learning opportunities for student leaders, while also providing a safety net for incoming first-year students looking to learn the ways of being, knowing, and doing within post-secondary contexts.
The Mentorship and Learning Program has run annually since 2005 and we continue to see a need in the programming offered within the course and practicums. Within post-secondary contexts, students in need of support are likely not to seek such support. The program provides such supports prior to its need and its impact is evident through the testimonials we receive from mentors, practicum instructors, and mentees who have gone onto to becoming mentors as they enter their third and fourth years of undergraduate programming.