For the first time, the School of Business is offering an alumni-based mentoring program to its students.
“We just wanted to offer another opportunity to our students to learn from real world professionals,” said Jennifer Thomsen, student services coordinator for the School of Business. “So they can get advice about resume critiques- what is needed when they go to look for a job or an internship and have someone with real life experience outside of the university to give them that advice.”
The sole requirement to be a mentor was to be an Emporia State alum or supporter, so when the call for mentors was sent out, the Business School received applications from all over the country — even places as far as Pennsylvania, Texas and California.
“The communication that’s involved in the program is once a month their mentors and mentees are going to be asked to communicate and so that means in person, if they’re local, or over the phone, or video chat,” Thomsen said.
Sixty-seven students and 63 mentors are involved in this program.
“I wanted to do the mentor program because it tends to be really difficult to establish really personal relationships with people that are actually in the field,” said Ana Zimmerman, junior business administration major. “It’s hard to forge those types of relationships really quickly at a career fair or a job fair, things like that. So this is kind of an insulated chance to be able to create a one-on-one personal relationship.”
Since Zimmerman intends to go into law, the mentor program paired her with Peggy Mast, who serves in the Kansas House of Representatives.
“We were really able to match all of our students with people who either had similar backgrounds or are interested in the same thing… We have quite a few mentors who own their own business, so some of them are local who own their own small business or have found work as CFO’s and COO’s of larger companies,” Thomsen said. We tried to pair up all of our information systems students with people who are working in a technology field and we were able to do that.”
The mentors come from many parts of the business world including people who have been involved in government and politics as well as some on ESU campus, Thomsen said.
“I just thought it was a good opportunity to provide some leadership to a student,” said Lisa Brumbaugh, regional director for the Small Business Development Center. “I thought back to when I was a student, a freshman or a sophomore or whatever, and how helpful it would’ve been to have had a mentor.”
