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Forbes featured Pace President Marvin Krislov's latest piece: "Mentorship: Good For The Mentored And Good For Those Mentoring, Too"
Forbes featured Pace President Marvin Krislov's latest piece: "Mentorship: Good For The Mentored And Good For Those Mentoring, Too"
January is National Mentorship Month, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the Alumni-Student Mentoring Program we launched at Pace University several years ago and put a renewed focus on last year. Today, hundreds of students are participating in the program. They’re getting valuable support, like career guidance, networking opportunities, and interview coaching, and they gain a cheerleader and a confidant.
But what’s been most interesting to me is how valuable this program has been for our alumni mentors.
We tend to think of mentorship as a one-way street. It’s a way for younger people to get insight and guidance, we typically think, and a way for their older colleagues to give back to future generations. Often mentorship programs are operated by an organization and seen by mentors as a way of serving the institution: contributing to an alumni network or an employer’s talent development program.
That’s all true. But I’ve been reminded by the feedback we’ve received from our alumni that mentorship provides real value to those volunteering their time and wisdom, too.
I’ve touched on this when I’ve written before about mentorship, but it’s even clearer to me from these responses that mentorship also offers powerful benefits to working professionals, even more senior ones. Our alumni mentors almost universally report that the work they’re doing with current students is personally rewarding and leaves them impressed with the next generation. But many also tell us that they’re gaining valuable knowledge.
Jay Seagren, for example, is an alumnus and seasoned tech executive who we paired with Samuel Corso, a current undergraduate with a two-year-old app-development startup. Jay has given Sam advice on running a company, interacting with clients, and managing time. But Sam has taught Jay a lot, too.
“I’ve learned so much about start-ups from Sam,” Jay told us. “He’s also taught me how to deal with smaller clients. I’ve learned about technology that is completely different from enterprise solutions.” The bottom line, Jay says, is that exposure to the startup world has been deeply eye-opening. “He forces me to learn more and more,” he says. “I’ve been surprised by how much I didn’t know.”
