Mentor a Bath Spa Student

As an industry professional, you can share your career experiences and knowledge with students keen to learn from you. By sharing your expertise, insight and wisdom you can empower and motivate your mentee to create plans for their own future, whilst developing yourself professionally. It’s a simple and fulfilling way to engage with the University and benefit from developing the next generation of talent. 

There is no universally agreed definition of mentoring. We feel the following definition represents how we use mentoring to support our students.

‘A voluntary, mutually beneficial and purposeful relationship in which an individual gives time to support another to enable them to make changes in their life.’ - Mentoring and Befriending Foundation

Networks and contacts are important for all of us, whatever organisation or sector we are in. Our mentoring scheme is a catalyst for bringing people together. Being a mentor will not only give you access to a pool of potential employees but you can also benefit by:  

• Improved interpersonal skills
• Personal development for staff in terms of leadership and management qualities
• Satisfaction of helping a student to achieve their career aspirations
• A raised organisation profile on campus
• Invitations to University events and collaborative opportunities
• You get to stay in touch with emerging issues that the next generation face 
• The opportunity to give-back and nurture

The role of the mentor is to engage with the mentee to establish a mutually beneficial and purposeful relationship where the focus may be on:

• Helping to build the mentee’s confidence and resilience
• Impart knowledge about your organisation, job roles and informal networks in your sector
• Offer different perspectives, drawing on your own experiences
• Offer support and encouragement
• Discuss current issues in the industry sector
• Signpost students to relevant contacts or resources
• Take the lead and make suggestions to help them achieve their career goals

You'll encourage students to:

• Review and reflect
• Consider different perspectives – challenge and change assumptions
• Develop a career plan and take responsibility for their own development

We ask that you:

• Establish the ground rules and expectations of the mentoring agreement
• Maintain confidentiality
• Create a supportive environment and build rapport
• Listen actively

The scheme runs throughout the year, supporting as many students as possible.

Timeline for mentors:

• Submit an Expression of Interest Form
• Asked to attend one 30 minute training session if the application is successful
• Mentoring Coordinator sends resources and link to create a profile on our closed network mentoring platform
• Matched with a mentee on the platform
• The meetings are goal focussed therefore the amount of time dedicated to achieve each goal will vary
• Meetings are flexible and can be face-to-face, video call or messages on the platform.

Once matched, the student will contact you to arrange an initial meeting.

We are using a world-leading mentoring software and technology company called PushFar to host our mentoring relationships. The easy to use software helps us to effectively match, manage and drive the scheme as well as being designed to help students to network and interact with fellow participants, track their progress, and set goals with their mentor.

As a mentor, you can also start threads and conversations, explore job opportunities, discover virtual events and network with other industry professionals.

Before you are matched with your first mentee we provide you with either physical or virtual training as well as online training and resources to help you approach mentoring with confidence. The training will take approximately one hour to complete and is run in October and March depending on when you join.

We want to recruit a range of mentors who can offer industry specific advice, as well as those who prefer to focus on the individual and their generic employability and professional skills. 

If you are interested in applying please tell us about yourself and your interest in our mentoring program, MentorMe, by filling out this Expression of Interest Form. Once completed, you will receive an email that outlines the next steps. We have capacity on the PushFar platform to recruit up to 250 mentors therefore it is important to remit a balance of experience and sector knowledge to reflect our student body and their employability needs.

If you have any questions or queries please contact the Mentoring Coordinator.

• Email: mentoring@bathspa.ac.uk
• Telephone: +44 (0)1225 875525