The Incredible Impact Of Mentorship
First, I want to thank the entire Trinity College community for what was a truly memorable Inauguration Weekend. The support I have received from everyone, including our highly valued alumni body, means a great deal to me.
I am very optimistic about our shared future and what we can all achieve together. We are deep into our work, with much planning already well under way. During the last two months of 2014, we held three small-group sessions about Trinity’s new mentoring networks program (new name to be announced soon), designed to support incoming students from their very first days on campus.
These sessions brought together students, faculty, and staff for important conversations about this new out-of-class program, which has an emphasis on enhancing social and academic support, beginning with first-year students. The mentoring networks program is one of our priority initiatives to strengthen campus culture and to enhance what is already excellent about Trinity.
What constitutes a mentoring network? Each network will be composed of a group of first-year students supported by a dedicated team: a dean, faculty mentor(s), a recent liberal arts graduate hired for one to two years to facilitate the transition to college, upper-level students who serve as peer mentors, career development mentors including alumni, and wellness mentors.
The current plan is that all incoming students will be assigned to one of five mentoring networks. Each network will comprise about 120 first-year students who live in Jones, Elton, Jackson, Wheaton, Smith, North, and Funston. There will be a central space in Mather Hall for the mentoring networks in which students can prepare meals, eat together, and gather in comfortable lounge spaces. Key features of the networks are self-governance, opportunities for leadership, programs on campus and in Hartford, intramurals, and service.
Our students will be intimately involved this year in planning and implementing these networks, ensuring the program meets their needs. Teams of students–through a design challenge–are in the process of developing a detailed plan to give life to the new mentoring networks system, and I look forward to the results of their creativity and work later this spring.
Research illustrates–and I have seen firsthand–the incredible impact mentorship has on the lives of college students, including establishing a student’s sense of belonging to the community, improving academic performance, and enhancing job satisfaction after graduation.
It is our goal to design networks that connect students to their peers, creating an immediate sense of belonging; to strengthen mentoring of students outside the classroom, inspiring them to cultivate knowledge; to connect students to Hartford, equipping them to take advantage of our city’s offerings; and to prepare students for life by developing engaged, civically minded persons. In short, the mentoring networks program will enrich central aspects of college life.
As all of you know very well, we at Trinity are readying our students to be independent thinkers who are prepared to engage the world. We are confident that the mentoring networks program will help us to accomplish this by combining the best elements of the previously proposed house system without the high cost of physical campus changes.
I know that you join me in looking forward to what lies ahead for Trinity. I appreciate your loyalty and devotion as alumni and pledge to you that we will continue our work to achieve our goal of a bold, engaged, and vibrant Trinity College.
“Research illustrates–and I have seen firsthand–the incredible impact mentorship has on the lives of college students, including establishing a student’s sense of belonging to the community, improving academic performance, and enhancing job satisfaction after graduation.”