First-Year Engineering is in the process of seeking out a variety of engineering students who we hope could be excellent mentors for our First-Year Engineering students that have found themselves on Academic Notice for the Spring 2025 semester. You can read more information about the ASP program here.

The time commitment as a mentor is not high, mentors would be expected to meet with their mentee two times per month for about 20-30 minutes each time, starting in February and lasting through April. So, they’d have about 1 hour or less of time commitment involved per month for each of those 3 months if they mentor 1 student and 1-1 ½ hours per month if they mentor 2 students (they would most likely just have one).

Mentors are not tutors, nor do we want or expect them to tutor a student. What we are asking for is to have conversations with the student about how to keep organized, how to manage their time, study, take effective notes, and where you go when you need help. What helped shaped your experience at Purdue? You don’t have to be an expert at any of these in order to help a fellow peer, and I know that our students could benefit from your perspective and experiences.  

We would like to have mentors paired up with a mentee by the end of the second week of spring classes. We would also like to briefly meet at the start of the semester so that we can go over some best practices and give all students an opportunity to share ideas with each other. We have mentors returning who all loved the opportunity and many who graduated said they would be happy to have mentored again if they weren’t graduating. It’s not a paid position but you can add the skills/job to their resume as volunteering. Again, the time commitment is pretty low for those 3 months.

If you know you want to be a mentor, please let me know by sending me a short email to confirm your interest/commitment no later than December 6th. Then I would also ask that you provide a little blurb/bio and photo to include on our mentor Padlet: https://padlet.com/krichwal1/academic-success-program-mentors-4xzrmh8f31hx7cpi