MentorNet

MentorNet

Carol Muller

Mentor net (www.MentorNet.net) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing national and local resources for mentoring. Its primary service is an E-mentoring network for women in engineering and science. MentorNet provides an infrastructure for e-mentoring for

higher education, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations. It is a large-scale, multi-institutional online network with an extensive, diverse pool of participants and focused expertise. MentorNet works with partnering organizations, who provide financial resources and marketing channels as well as a pool of potential mentors.

The fundamental goal of MentorNet is to pair undergraduate/graduate students/postdocs with engineering/science professionals for 8-month-long, structured, email-based relationships. The pairing is accomplished by online information and participant profiles along with bi-directional sorting of protegés and mentors, with protegés opting to select their mentor, or have MentorNet match them with a mentor, based on backgrounds and preferences, using customized algorithms to optimize matches. Current software gives protegés choice in selecting a mentor, allows year-round one-on-one matching, and avoids delays in getting protegés started.

Online training is provided in the form of guides for mentors and students and by interactive online case studies. Customized discussion suggestions sent every 1-2 weeks to all mentors and protegés provide Email "coaching," and program staff provide support to address problems and issues. Since 1998, 11,200 pairs have been matched.

Recently MentorNet has emphasized mentoring for students interested in academic careers with the development of a new program, Academic Career E-Mentoring (ACE), in cooperation with the National Science Foundation and WEPAN. The program promotes one-on-one mentoring for academic careers, matching graduate students with tenured faculty. Forty one pairs have been matched this year. In Fall of 2004, the program will be extended to matching untenured faculty with tenured faculty. The biggest challenge is recruiting tenured faculty as mentors.

Regular online surveys provide feedback for evaluation of the program from both mentor and student point of view. In recent surveys students remark on:

• ongoing encouragement, reassurance, and moral support; boosting confidence (known to be strongly related to retention) (66% strongly emphasized)
• career information, alternatives and inspiration; learning about mentor's workplace (45-75% emphasized)
• academic advice and support; relating studies to workplace (52% emphasized)
• advice for women, and female role models in engineering and science fields (not quantified, but evident)
• options for balancing family and work (46% emphasized)

Mentors observed:

• personal satisfaction in helping develop and advance the next generation (74-81% emphasized)
• making a positive and important difference in the lives of students (not quantified)
• impetus for reflections on own career (69% emphasized)
• variations by mentors' racial/ethnic groups on outcomes of skills and self-confidence effects

MentorNet