A comparative view of mentoring approaches in Southampton

Abstract

Long-standing mentoring schemes have been operating in separate faculties within our same institution and using the same terminology, however, presenting important differences. The commonalities and differences are explored as the term “mentor” is unpicked given the context of use, and the nature of the support required and offered in both cases. Most specifically, the MSc mentoring scheme that operates successfully within ECS since 2010, has sought to offer support to MSc students leveraging the recent experiences of current PhD students who have emerged successfully from MSc programmes. However, given the challenges of scale, the mentor-mentee relationships are typically not one-to-one, but one-to-many, and the agenda for discussion is typically structured or semi-structured, in stark contrast with the university-wide mentoring scheme. Within some disciplines mentoring is almost non-existing. Through this comparative analysis, we can comment on the successes and vulnerabilities of such schemes and their suitability to support student success. However, the mentoring schemes are high on the agenda and the University is committed to support mentoring. Most recently the University networks including Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) team have been working on reviewing the mentoring provision, developing and piloting Diversity Mentoring Programme.