Principles of Mentoring at BYU

Primary Principles

1. Students should have access to faculty (and/or mentoring teams) for sufficient time to allow development of personal and professional relationships.
2. Students should be involved in programs and processes wherein scholarship and/or central academic activities in its several forms constitutes the core of their experiences.
3. Students should be given the opportunity for growth in skills and increase in responsibility in the project or experience involved.
4. Students should be provided opportunity and examples for integration of spiritual and secular understanding.
5. Mentored experiences should be pertinent to future situations of the students involved and ideally would assist the students in attaining the "next level" of their chosen disciplines.

Supporting Principles of Mentoring

1. Mentored experiences may involve many differing forms such as study abroad, etc. where environments are clearly learning –centered and engage BYU faculty and qualified adjunct faculty with students.
2. Mentoring in teaching activities should extend well beyond the routine tasks associated with teaching to development of new concepts of learning and/or delivery systems, etc.
3. Class projects may qualify as mentored environments where they continue and expand after the academic term.
4. Mentoring environments may facilitate faculty development and should contribute to the university in meaningful ways.
5. Where appropriate, students should become co-authors or co-creators of some significant work and make a public presentation of their project’s results.

Description of Mentored Environments

Mentored environments in the sciences often involve a number of undergraduate and graduate students in laboratory settings. They may involve one faculty member as the primary mentor or groups of faculty members (as may be found in some interdisciplinary centers). The environment typically brings new students into an existing group where they are taught basic skills under senior or graduate students. They participate in regular laboratory meetings and seminars and eventually assume some independent experimental work. Students generally are expected to participate in national or regional meetings and to publish their work along with the others in the group.

In other disciplines, mentored environments may be as simple as a one-on-one relationship with a faculty member where significant responsibility and opportunity are given to the students in a research and/or writing environment. Such relationships differ from regular employment as research aides in the level of responsibility and independence required of the students. In other situations, students may become part of larger, continuing programs where they are assigned individual parts of the larger project and meet with their mentor(s) and fellow students to share experiences and findings. Often, these projects lead to published reports or journal articles.

Projects in some disciplines may involve extended preparation of groups of students through specific classes followed by travel to study sites (museums, archeological sites, etc.). Such experiences may result in joint reports, presentations, or publications by the group.

In other cases, students in a particular curriculum might practice theory and skills learned in class while in a field setting. Here several faculty members would interact with students during the day and into the evening hours to assist and critique various expressions and discovery or creation.

Students may also produce such things as works of art, literature, film and theater productions, business plans, and tangible products under the mentoring of faculty.

Relationship of Students and Faculty in the Mentoring Process

While the focus is on undergraduate students, we recognize that advanced undergraduates, graduate students and post-graduate students all participate in mentoring. Involvement of the advanced students enriches their skills and allows them to contribute, thus benefiting them, the faculty and the undergraduates as a result.

BYU encourages faculty to bring undergraduates into their professional work to help the student have an advanced educational experience and to help the faculty in their academic pursuits. The Office of Research and Creative Activities promotes this by offering Mentoring Environments Grants (MEGs) to BYU faculty. The benefits to the students that result from a mentored project include:

• Starting professional relationships that will last a lifetime
• Gaining in-depth understanding and expert guidance on a topic not possible with classroom-only experience
• Developing self-confidence by completing a significant long-term project
• Developing spiritual growth as the mentor teaches what the Holy Ghost has taught him or her regarding the discipline, the gospel, and life
• Strengthening applications for graduate schools, prestigious scholarships and careers