Hi Angela,

Here at the University of Brighton we run the mentoring scheme ‘Peer Assisted Study Sessions’ where student volunteers are facilitating students in informal small group study sessions.

To recruit our leaders we asked academic staff for personal recommendations of students who they felt would be suitable, whom we then sent a personal invite to asking if they would be willing to do the role. Students were extremely pleased to have been thought of by staff and very willing to accept the role.

We do not necessarily recruit the highest achieving students but also the ones who have good people skills, are motivated and would be encouraging to other students. Therefore on large cohorts where staff are unable to know students by name, it isn’t about just selecting the students with top grades but using other approaches.

This is the situation we have found ourselves in this year and are considering trialling an application form, an example of an HEI that does this already is the University of West of England http://www.uwe.ac.uk/pal/pal-application.shtml .


Hope that helps,

Best wishes,

Lucy

Lucy Chilvers
Lecturer in Learning Development
Centre for Learning and Teaching
University of Brighton
 
Address:
Centre for Learning and Teaching
Room 113, Mayfield House
Falmer Campus, BN1 9PH
 
Tel: 01273 641920
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web:http://www.brighton.ac.uk/clt/

-----Original Message-----
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Angela McQuade
Sent: 15 March 2011 14:47
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Recruiting mentors

Dear all,

The School of Maths in Queen's University Belfast piloted a voluntary mentoring scheme this year.  It has been hugely successful, to the extent that they have many more students wishing to become mentors than will be required for next year.  I am aware that this is a good problem to have, however, my question is: how do they select from a large group of willing potential mentors?  This year's mentors will be closely involved in selection and are very reluctant to interview. I would be very grateful to hear of your experiences of selecting mentors or students for any voluntary roles.

Regards,
Angela.
Learning Development Tutor

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