Academic Mentoring
The Academic Mentoring Committee is investigating the beginning of various pilot-programs aimed at providing centralized mentoring services to all students—graduate and undergraduate—at The University of Iowa. Graduate Students—many of whom will become college professors—are a unique resource to The University of Iowa Community. They can benefit from being a mentor in both professional and personal ways. Mentees clearly gain knowledgeable resources from the information conveyed by their mentors. This committee is current exploring how graduate students as mentors can be integrated into existing groups such as ICRU (Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates) and The Graduate College.
NEW! Help us in our mission of defining the perfect peer mentor and of enhancing graduate student life experience at the University of Iowa! You can do that by taking our less than 3-minutes anonymous survey about peer mentoring needs across the University of Iowa Campus.
If you are interested in becoming a mentor to undergraduate or first year graduate students, not just concerning research related issues and projects, but also regarding details of graduate students' life in general, please contact the committee chair.
Our mission statement:
"The GSS Academic Mentoring Committee’s mission is to provide assistance and guidance to undergraduate students interested in graduate school and to graduate students in their first years in matters of professional and personal development.
The Mentoring program will serve in part as an information bank from which new students can receive knowledge firsthand about various graduate programs of their interest and details about student life at the University of Iowa. It will also serve as a fundamental resource in the building of social interactions and networks of students in similar areas of study and expertise. The intention of this program is not only to serve in reducing attrition - an all too common trend in graduate education-, but also to function as a forum for the development of interpersonal skills, fellowship and support systems for fellow graduates. Among the goals of this program are :(a)to provide personal points of contacts for new or aspiring graduate students as they make the transition to graduate life at the University of Iowa, (b) to facilitate an open forum and/or face-to-face discussion regarding particular issues faced by graduate students as they make their way through the program, (c) to encourage and strengthen the development of interpersonal skills through direct interactions with peers in a variety of different activities and (d)to promote social and intellectual excellence in all areas of development.
The GSS Academic Mentoring Committee is run and organized by current graduate and professional students in collaboration/cooperation with the appropriate University offices and administration.
The GSS Academic Mentoring Committee should not be viewed as a tutoring or research-advising service or as a substitute for existing mentoring/advising programs within individual departments or areas of study at the University of Iowa, but rather as a complementary effort and additional resource to the programs available on campus."
