Faculty may find opportunities to mentor individual students. In sustained and focused work with one student or a small group of students, Faculty members model professional practices and encourage students to develop their own skills and projects beyond the parameters of a particular course. In addition, in their work with individual students and small groups, Faculty often exemplify the kinds of attitudes and values that are at the heart of liberal arts education. In so doing, they teach by example, thus extending the aims of the College. This “teaching by example” is central to mentoring, which can be oriented toward professional skills, or life skills, or both.
Although mentoring clearly incorporates aspects of both teaching and advising, sometimes mentoring is done separately from these activities as they are formally recognized. Students mentored may or may not be a Faculty member's advisees and may or may not be enrolled in a Faculty member's course. Mentoring substantially contributes both to individual student development and to the atmosphere of individualized attention promoted at Hendrix.
Mentoring activities include (but are not limited to) the following:
- involving students in research or other professional activities;
- supervising student experiential learning projects;
- involving students in activities related to the ACS consortium;
- directing student research outside regular coursework, leading to publication and public presentation at NCUR or other venues;
- engaging in conversations about the professional expectations and practices in the faculty member's discipline or related fields;
- helping students with proposals for grants and other honors; and
- working with students on graduate school applications or other post-graduation plans.