Effective mentoring requires more than monitoring the academic part of a student’s college experience. The advising, advocacy and apprenticeship mentoring process must include feedback from the student to assess mentoring’s effectiveness. Each student has unique academic, social and emotional needs that must be addressed within the framework of the overall mentoring process. This requires developing a mentor-mentee relationship based on trust and respect and must encompass the influence of cultural and value influences, especially at the beginning of the relationship. These influences should be key factors in matching mentor and mentee; considering the academic, personal, cultural and socio economic aspects of the student’s experiences and how these factors interact with each other within the student’s on campus experience.

This is especially true for first generation and students from socio-economic backgrounds that are not in the majority on a particular campus. How does a mentor go about assisting a student with the social tools necessary to succeed in college without tacitly encouraging that student to adopt a culture that may be foreign to them? College is an acculturation process that prepares students for the broad experience they will encounter in the world after college.

Part of the mentor’s responsibility in the acculturation process is assessment of the student’s values and priorities and how they transition from where they’re from to where they plan on going. It can’t just be making sure a student knows how to speak and act in the presence of professors and peers. True mentoring requires knowing the student’s background, experience and objectives; without this information it will be difficult to know how to approach the student as a mentor so that the advice and counsel shared resonates with that student. Look holistically at the student when mentoring or advising – personalize the experience for both the mentee and the mentor; that is the only way to be effective.