Case Study - USyd Business Alumni Mentoring Program

The Business Alumni Mentoring Program (AMP) is fast becoming one of my favourite programs to work on. It matches students with a one-to-one mentor from a pool of alumni mentors to foster students’ career transition and development.

It’s an exciting program to manage because it makes a real change to students’ lives. Although not specifically designed for international students, it is often these students whose lives are changed the most profoundly. Students report greater self-confidence, greater self-awareness, and a strong sense of control over their career development. Many students don’t know what they don’t know, and this program has provided them with insight about areas of business that they didn’t even know existed. For international students in particular, networking is an important outcome in an environment that is sometimes hostile to international students because of visa limitations in terms of the work they can do.

We have quickly become victims of our own success – following pressure to expand the program, the team now realises that we did so without allowing our labour-intensive processes catch up. From its humble beginnings with 10 mentor-mentee pairs two years ago, we now must whittle down 234 applications to 50. We must review how to keep track of fifty pairs of participants to ensure that students are having a meaningful experience. Presently, this is done by requiring students to submit learning journals and to meet with me for a consultation in the middle of the program, but we are unsure how sustainable this will be should the program grow any further.

I will be presenting on this program, and asking how to scale the program without losing the student experience, at the STARS Conference in July 2017. I don’t have the answers, but I invite colleagues to get in touch if you’ve got any ideas to share, or if you’re interested in starting something like this at your own institution.

Dan Smith

Student Experience Programs Coordinator

University of Sydney Business School

dan.smith@sydney.edu.au