Mentorship to build college community feeling
Seneca College’s SMILE program helps first-year students settle into school
Having just moved to Toronto from Ottawa to take a paralegal diploma program at Seneca College, Kathryn Brklacich was stressed out and lonely as she began her first semester last September.
To help adjust to her new environment, the 24-year-old decided to take advantage of a free mentoring program offered at the college.
Set up as a pilot program in 2002, Student Mentoring in Life & Education (SMILE) was developed by Seneca as an intervention strategy to address retention issues by pairing experienced students with first-year students to keep them at school. Now serving 780 mentors and more than 1,100 “proteges” across five campuses, the system aims to engage new students by providing them with a sense of community as they adapt to college life.
“My mentor was extremely helpful in answering all of my questions about our program, classes, faculty and navigating the campus,” Brklacich says.
During particularly stressful times, Brklacich’s mentor kept her focused on her studies and was always on hand to listen to concerns.
“Without her, I think I would have felt very lost during the first few months of my new semester,” Brklacich says.
“Since we are peers and in the same program, I felt very comfortable asking her questions and going to her with concerns, since it was only one year previous that she was a new student in the same situation as myself.”
According to Margie Bader, co-ordinator of the mentoring program, SMILE fosters the development of transferable skills in mentors and “proteges” that will significantly impact their success at college — and in the workplace.
“Mentoring is becoming more pop- ular in post-secondary institutions,” she says, “because individuals who receive support from their peers are more likely to adapt well to college life, succeed academically and persist until graduation.”
Mentors benefit too, learning leadership skills useful in the workplace.
Brklacich’s mentor, Sasi Kathir, firmly believes the experience will help her career.
“The role of a mentor has made me a more confident, oriented and organized person, which will help when I’m interacting with clients in the future,” she says.
“As a mentor, you have to remember deadlines, be honest and work with confidentiality, which are key requirements in my career as a paralegal.”
The program wasn’t as time-consuming as Kathir had feared.
“I expected to be in constant communication with the protege,” she says. “Instead, the program is very relaxed; the mentor is required to meet or speak with the protege for only one hour a week. It’s at the mentor’s discretion to see how much time a protege requires and reduce the time commitment when they are comfortable.”
Apart from all that, SMILE fosters lasting bonds between two people who might otherwise never have met, as Brklacich can attest to.
“Sasi helped me to get involved in different organizations and activities on campus, which in turn allowed me to meet lots of new people and network with different peers and faculty members,” she says.
“The best part about us being paired together is that she became not only a mentor, but a great friend.”