UAA launches Seawolf Mentor

In May, UAA launched Seawolf Mentor, a program hosted through the Mentor Collective, a nonprofit organization that runs mentorship and peer mentorship programs for colleges and universities nationwide. Originally, the program was meant to solely focus on incoming freshmen and first-time students. However, given the current health crisis, the program will be open to all students for the fall semester, according to Claudia Lampman, vice provost for Student Success.

“It’s a way to connect students who are like one another in their interests or backgrounds,” said Lampman. “I think that connecting students in whatever we can is really important, particularly our first-time students.”

The program’s goal is to help connect students and create a sense of belonging and community while attending UAA — something that Lampman stresses is incredibly important especially now since students are not regularly coming to campus and do not have as many opportunities to make connections.

Valerie Robideaux, director of First-Year Advising and Student Success, said that students are invited to participate in the program when they sign up for classes for fall semester. Once they enroll in the program, the Mentor Collective follows up with students to begin the mentor matching process.

Students and mentors are matched based on answers from a Mentor Collective questionnaire when signing up for the program, which focuses on details like a student's major, their interests and goals. Mentees are then matched with a mentor who has voluntarily signed up to provide guidance and expertise and who answered similarly in a mentor-specific questionnaire. The Mentor Collective then provides contact information through their texting platform, allowing mentor and mentee to schedule sessions once they’re matched. According to the Mentor Collective, since UAA launched the program, 147 mentors have completed training, 434 students have registered with the program and a total of 343 mentoring matches have been made.

Lampman said that she thinks this new resource is useful for students at any point in their collegiate journey and at any time. 

“It doesn't totally matter where they are in school because it's a mentoring program that isn't tied to their classes or a class schedule,” said Lampman. “What we really want to do is connect students.” 

If you are interested in becoming a mentor or signing up as a mentee, head to Seawolf Mentor to learn more and sign up. Also, check out UAA’s feature in Mentor Collective’s blog post.

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