This is not a panacea for basic skill level deficiencies or poor attitudes, but a component in our strategy to help students who want help. Each first year course should have a set of mentors. Each discipline should supply a list of potential mentors to the Academic Skills Centre in the period between April and June. Potential mentors should not only have achieved good grades in the course, but also convey warmth, an interest in others, and a sense of organization. It is important that mentoring be available from the start of the term in September.
Mentors require training and continued monitoring and reinforcement.
At present, Academic Skills Centre staff sit in on mentoring sessions. Course instructors should meet with the mentors. We should expand the role of student societies beyond social functions into academic areas, such as support and promotion of mentoring. Since attitude and time management are problem areas that eclipse our efforts to diagnose and remedy skills deficiencies and our ability to convey course content, the clout that student societies may have in communicating as peers should be used to full effect. Simply put, first-year students are much more likely to listen to admonitions about study habits, attitudes and related matters when they come from fellow students than when they come from faculty and TAs.