Fall 2007

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The Albers Mentor Program centers on placing senior undergraduates and graduate students with Greater Puget Sound corporate, company and organizational leaders who hold leadership positions such as Chairman, CEO, COO, CFO, President, Vice President, Director, Manager, Principal, Owner or Partner. Albers students value the opportunity to meet with their seasoned mentors and are eager to share the benefits from this valuable experiential learning opportunity.

The program purposes are to:

• Support graduate students and undergraduate seniors in maximizing their Albers School educational experience;

• Provide rich and rewarding opportunities to gain guidance and wisdom from successful Puget Sound executives;

• Provide real-life dialogue around business issues and career development concerns;

• Partner with other students in the Mentor Program to build relationships and connections;

• Foster vibrancy and diversity in the Albers students learning journey.

Mentor Fair 2007

On October 5, 2007, the Albers School of Business and Economics and the Albers Placement Center hosted the Annual Mentor Fair. The purpose of the Mentor Fair is to provide interested students with an opportunity to meet, mix, and mingle with participating Albers Mentor Program mentors prior to casting their ballots to select a mentor for the academic year. The evening began with a hosted reception held in Pigott Atrium where mentors and students met informally over food and beverage. New mentors, seasoned mentors, faculty, staff and students networked and reconnected as they discussed the Mentor Program and its benefits. Guests were greeted and welcomed by Dean Joseph Phillips, Jr.

Following the reception, students circulated throughout the Pigott building where they had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with mentors of their choice. Mentors were assigned specific classrooms and their respective bios were posted outside the rooms to assist students in easily finding them. Students rotated between the meet-the-mentor rooms and met informally with mentors-of-interest to learn more about the mentor's style, approach to mentoring, and professional background. Mentors were also given a preview of potential mentees and similarly had the opportunity to indicate students-of-interest for the current Albers Mentor Program year.

At the closure of the Mentor Fair, students cast their ballots for their six mentors-of-choice. Over the next several weeks, the Albers Placement Center Manager of Experiential Programs, Megan Warner, paired mentors and students in small groups based upon their mutual selections. Assignments were communicated to mentors and students in late October 2007.

Mentor and Student Orientations 2007

To best prepare both mentors and students for their entry into the program, The Albers Placement Center conducted Mentor and Student Orientations.  Mentors participated in a Mentor Orientation prior to the Mentor Fair on October 5^th which was hosted by Mary Lou Moffat, Albers Placement Center Director.  Darren Hamby from Zymogenetics provided a perspective from his previous mentoring experiences. An additional make-up session for those mentors who were unable to attend the Mentor Fair was provided at the end of October.

As mentors participated in their orientation on October 5^th, students concurrently participated in a Student Orientation.  Megan Warner, Manager of Experiential Programs for the Albers Placement Center and Paula Fitzgerald-Boos, Albers Grad Career Consultant led a lively session for interested students and encouraged them to make the most of the unique learning opportunity provided by the Albers Mentor Program.  Patricia Diaz-Kismarton, past MBA student and Mentor Program participant shared her perspective on how to gain the most out of the Mentor Program. 

Mentor Forums

For the past few years, the Albers Placement Center has hosted a series of Mentor Forums as part of the Albers Mentor Program.  These events are for mentors to come together and share in dialogue about their mentoring experiences.

As part of a longer-range plan, the Mentor Forums were conceived and designed to support our Albers School of Business and Economics strategies in fostering connectedness with the regional and local business community and to meet the desired Albers Placement Center goal of expanding business contacts through mentorship, internship programs and placement. The Mentor Forums are intended to enhance the quality and success of the current Mentor Program. 

Mentor Forum Objectives 

• Identify and share best practices in mentoring.
• Identify mentoring challenges and address ways to meet these challenges.
• Develop a strong four-way partnership with our business community leaders, the Albers School, the Albers Placement Center and Seattle University.

Mentor Forum Process 

In each session, mentors have an opportunity to meet and network with other peer mentors, talk with seasoned veterans in the Mentor Program, pose questions to one another, and receive coaching from Mary Lou Moffat, Director of the Albers Placement Center. General discussion topics include: 

• "What's been happening" to date in the mentoring sessions
• "What's working as a best practice" in the mentoring sessions
• "What's not working and how to address these challenges" in the mentoring sessions
• New ideas/lessons from the mentoring sessions

Fall Mentor Forum

Last week we hosted our first Mentor Forum for the 2007-2008 year.  We had a great turnout of 14 mentors.  The lively discussion focused on what's been going well with mentoring sessions so far, challenges the mentors are facing and how to handle them, as well as best practices or helpful hints for successful mentoring experiences.  Most of the mentors had already met with their student groups and some groups have even met twice already!  It sounds like some wonderful things are happening so far with the mentor groups such as resume reviews, guest speakers, job shadowing, discussions about values and life balance, conversations on various business topics, sharing meals together, and "getting to know you" activities.  The Mentor Forum participants also shared some holiday spirit with wine, appetizers, and networking with one another.  It was a great event!  We hope to see you at the next one.

**If you are a mentor who was unable to make it to the Fall Forum and would like to receive a copy of the debrief notes on the discussion, please email Megan Warner at warnerm@seattleu.edu.

Save the Date for Upcoming Mentor Forums

Winter: Tuesday, March 4, 2008; 5:30-7:30pm (Student Center 160)
We are still working on details and will send more information in January
Dinner will be provided

Spring: Tuesday, June 10, 2008; 4-6pm (Pigott 416)

The Mentor's Journey

The following excerpt is from the book The Mentor's Guide by Lois Zachary to provide you with some words of advice on having an effective mentoring experience:

              "In order to lay a solid foundation for building an effective learning relationship, mentors must have a clear understanding of their own personal journey...The journey metaphor captures the meandering quality of the movement that follows us throughout life as we face new challenges...There are three steps in the journey observation process.  The first step is self-awareness, which is triggered by self-reflection; it is fundamental to understanding the mentor's proper role in facilitating effective learning relationships.  The second step is to understand the mentee's journey.  Mentees bring their own history of experience to a mentoring relationship.  Rather than assume what that history and experience is, a mentor who engages the mentee in a discussion of that experience can better avoid the mentor cloning trap.  The third step is to gain perspective, for mentors to look again at their journey and that of the mentee(s).  What mentors learn from observing these separate and distinct paths has direct implications for the learning outcomes."

If you would like more information on this topic including some guided activities for these steps mentioned above, please contact Megan Warner at 206.296.2472 or warnerm@seattleu.edu.  This book is a great guide for successful mentoring so it might be worth adding to your library!


Save the Date!

 This program made possible by the generous support of

PACCAR Inc.