Warrington Advisors Present at 2010 NACADA Region 4 Conference in Atlanta

Congratulations to Lindsey & Robbie: Winners of the "Best of Region" Award at the NACADA Region 4 Regional Conference!

by Lindsey Dedow

This past weekend, at the NACADA Region 4 conference, Robbie Shields and I presented a session detailing the development of our new Career and Academic Peer Mentoring program, titled “Get Ready To Work! The Development and Implementation of a Career Focused Peer Mentor Program.” I wanted to share the gist of our session here with the UF advising community.

When asked to identify their reasons for going to college, the top three reasons students identified were "to get a better job" (78%), "to get training for a specific career" (75%), and "to be able to make more money" (70%) (CIPR Freshman Survey, 2005). And 76% of employers who hire college students prefer to hire someone with relevant work experience (NACE, 2009). Armed with this data, in 2009 the School of Business implemented a requirement for all students to complete at least one internship before graduation. While we have always encouraged our students to complete an internship, requiring nearly 4,000 business majors to do so necessitated a significant increase in the administrative time required to successfully administer the program. We began to look at ways that we could provide additional support to our students going through the internship search process and also process the additional paperwork necessary to track the requirement.

Realizing that our students are one of our most effective resources for reaching out to other students, we implemented a peer mentoring program called ‘CAPs’ for Career and Academic Peer mentors. Utilizing successful student mentors to guide our students through the process is beneficial for everyone involved: the mentees, the student mentors, and the School of Business. The benefits to the mentees are that the mentors are selected and trained to be experts in the internship search process. They are upper-division students who have successfully found and completed at least one internship and are enthusiastic about helping their peers find the same success. They have time to individually guide students through all aspects of the process. For the mentors, the benefits are both professional and personal development. Professionally, mentors gain experience in public speaking and presentation skills, network with University staff and College faculty and develop their leadership skills. They also benefit by the enhanced stature of their degree in professional circle when UF business students graduate more prepared for their careers. Personally, our mentors find satisfaction in giving back to the students in their school. And finally, the School of Business benefits because our advisors have more time to spend on working with students on career advising and development and other student contact such as teaching and mentoring.

CAPs work throughout the year in small teams, by major, with a supervising advisor. They meet students through involvement in preview sessions, by co-leading required small group advising sessions, class participation and by email invitations sent by the advisors. They work with students to develop their resumes through leadership and involvement, serve as resources and support through the internship search process, critique resumes and cover letters, and conduct mock interviews. They have developed and presented workshops for students about the internship requirement and search process and will assist advisors in pre-screening internship applications. We began this year, our pilot year, with 15 CAPs and hope to increase our team to 20 next year. Initial results indicate that the majority of the students who worked with a CAP mentor this year found the mentor to be helpful in the areas of their internship search, resume, interviewing, and in giving academic suggestions. We are excited about the opportunities to continue to work together with such highly motivated students to provide all our students with the tools they need to be successful.