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Mentoring

Mentoring may be defined as, a developmental, helping relationship in which a teacher invests time, expertise, and effort to increase and improve students’ growth, knowledge and skills. The role of mentor is to advance the student’s career through an interpersonal engagement that facilitates sharing, guidance, experience and expertise. Like any interpersonal relationship, the one between mentor and student will evolve over time. Today’s students come from increasingly diverse backgrounds hence the need for a mentoring system is very much there. New graduate students, in particular, may express the desire for a mentor with whom they can personally interact, and each mentoring relationship is to be tailored in accordance with the student’s goals, needs and learning style.

The process followed in the Department:

Mentoring system was being followed since the inception of the department. Initially each class (60 numbers) was divided into two and each half was assigned a mentor, one of whom was the class in charge and the other, assistant class in charge (30 students under each mentor). The students who had academic difficulties were handled by them in consultation with the respective HODs. The students having emotional, family, learning disabilities were referred to the Psychology department.

Since 2014-15 academic year, the mentoring system evolved into a better and systematic process. A form was developed by the counsellors in consultation with the class in charges and the HODs. The students of each class were divided in groups of 15 and assigned a mentor each who would be in charge of the students. Each Mentor interacts with the students on a regular basis and maintains a separate individual mentor form for each student, in which details of the mentoring sessions would be entered. Ideally, the mentor should meet the student thrice in each semester, the first session two weeks after the commencement of the new semester, the second after the first IA and the third after the model examinations. The consolidated mentor form is passed on to the Psychology department in each semester for professional counselling, remedial action, follow up and analysis.