Many students fantasize of earning their degree and starting their dream job. A lot of those students wonder what it will be like – will all this work be worth it?
Students interested in STEM fields now have the opportunity to ask questions like these to a professional through the UNM STEM Collaborative Center and Air Force Research Laboratories mentoring program.
This informal program matches undergraduates with a scientist or engineer mentor from AFRL for a semester to answer any questions they may have regarding advancement in a STEM career.
The STCC & AFRL mentoring program launched in Fall 2015 with eight student-mentor matches. Tara Hackel, the program coordinator, said they focus on recruiting underclassmen because they are more at risk for switching out of STEM majors or dropping out, but any undergraduate can participate, regardless of major.
“At an institutional level, the goal of our program is to pilot a mentoring program between UNM and AFRL. Within a few years, the program will have learned many lessons about logistics and will be able to demonstrate whether the program is effective at increasing students’ achievement or retention in STEM degrees,” Hackel said.
She said the purpose of the program is to help students form a personal, supportive relationship with professionals in their field. To do this, the matches are free to discuss and do anything they want during their informal meetings, which are one to three hours a week for the semester. Last semester’s discussions ranged from questions about applying for graduate school to what it’s like in the mentors’ careers and determining what STEM field would best suit the mentees.
“When I was a freshmen in engineering, I would have loved to get coffee once a week with a successful engineer. Like other first-generation college students, I had questions,” Hackel said.
Now students can get answers to those questions in a comfortable setting with someone they can be comfortable with, she said.
One participant formed such a good relationship with his mentor, he hesitated to return for the spring semester because he said he felt bad for keeping his mentor all to himself and he wanted another student to benefit from him. The mentor, Timothy Wolfe, said he thought his mentee was doing so well, he was ready to be a mentor himself.
“So, in an example of the programs’ responsiveness to students’ interests, we ended up setting up a different type of match: the student and (Wolfe) will co-mentor a sophomore chemical engineer in the spring,” Hackel said. “This set-up lets us pilot another level of the mentoring experience, which could become a potential new capacity of the program.”
Wolfe is a UNM electrical computer engineering graduate student and an active-duty Air Force military personnel currently assigned to AFRL.
He said mentors benefit from the program as much as the student mentees do because it allows them to work on teaching and leadership abilities by connecting with students. He said that connection is the most important aspect of this program to him because it is how mentors will help mentees navigate the road toward their goals.
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“That’s one thing I always wanted to make sure I did. I wouldn’t be like that professor who would bark at a student saying, ‘This is what you have to do, but I’m not going to tell you how to get there.’ I want to guide my mentee on that path,” Wolfe said.
Maria Oroyan, a sophomore chemical engineering major, will be matched with the co-mentors when the spring program starts.
She said her greatest benefit was getting to see her last mentor as a real person in an informal way.
“I think a lot of students like myself have a tendency to look at professionals and admire them in awe and think, ‘How can I ever get there,’” Oroyan said. “Getting to know (my mentor), I realized she was a lot more relatable. She is a human being as well.”
She said the program was relaxed and didn’t consume a lot of time, and the encouragement from her mentor actually enhanced her schoolwork.
“Talking to someone who’s been through college and been through the entire experience (helped me) feel a lot more motivated to get through classes, which are kind of tough, and make it all the way to the end,” she said.
Oroyan said other benefits she received from the program were more engagement with the community, more insight into some of her courses and more interest in opportunities offered at AFRL.
She said that, as she continues to participate in the mentoring program, she hopes to expand her network and learn as much as she can and expose herself to more opportunities. Oroyan said she recommends students with similar goals try the program.
The STCC and AFRL collaborative group hosts three events for the program participants throughout the semester: an introductory mixer, a tour of AFRL research laboratories and an end-of-program celebratory mixer.
The introductory mixer gives the matches a chance to get to know each other while the celebration mixer gives students a chance to network and build relationships. The tours allow students to explore AFRL and see if they are interested in potential opportunities there. Tours are open to all undergraduate students, even if they’re not participating in the program.
Applications for the free Spring 2016 mentoring program are open now. Students can get the interest form to apply at stem.unm.edu and must email it to stem@unm.edu by 7 p.m. on Jan. 25. For more information, visit stem.unm.edu or email Tara Hackel at tshackel@unm.edu.
Skylar Griego is a culture reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @TDLBooks.
