Abstract:

The Faculty of Law of the University of Girona has been implementing a tutoring and mentoring programme for some years now. The programme, called 'PATuM' (Pla d'accio tutorial i mentoratge, in Catalan) has several strengths, such as providing a better orientation of new students, fostering collaboration among them, etc. However there has always been a major drawback: there are no tutors.

There are several reasons for that: members of the Faculty are already overburdened with work; financial constraints have brought along even more work and lesser recognition, to the point that staff are not given any credits for the supervision of the students' final projects (called 'Treballs finals de grau', TFG); a lack of tradition of such programmes in the Faculty of Law, etc.

Nevertheless, the Faculty is implementing some improvements aimed at correcting the present situation, namely:
a) creating a working group of Faculty members interested in tutoring. Specific teaching on tutoring will be provided to the members of this group with the collaboration of the Institute of Sciences of the Education (ICE) and
b) alumni will be involved in the project.

Therefore former students will keep their contact which the Faculty, something which is quite needed at the present moment in which there is almost no relationship after students obtain their degrees. At the same time, new students may obtain extra help of information from more experienced students who are already in the market.

This paper aims at explaining the experience with the PATuM to date and how these proposals for improvement are introduced and implemented. Resistance and difficulties will be explored, as well as some ways to cope with them. It is concluded that the lack of tutors is a major hurdle if a tutoring programme has to work smoothly and be complete. Nevertheless it shows how imaginative ways may help to ameliorate the present situation and add more value to the programme itself while improving the experience of the participants in it.

Keywords:

Tutoring, mentoring, students, teaching, law, alumni, teams, tutors.