MENTORING DIVERSITY - A PROGRAMME TO REDUCE STUDENT ATTRITION AND ADVANCE EXCELLENCE IN LEARNING

Contrary to a widespread belief, a huge and continuously growing number of students do not meet the demands that universities make. These students can be divided into two groups:
The first group describes students who often do not score as many credit points per semester as they are intended to. This leads to an extension of their prescribed period of study. Some students even suspend attendance from college temporarily due not to problems regarding contents of their subject, but also to financial, familial or other challenges. In worst cases this even leads to a rising student withdrawal rate.
The second group characterises “honors students”. These “most able” students often need bigger intellectual stimulation which a “normal” curriculum cannot offer them.
Based on this knowledge it is highly important that universities start developing (or fitting their existing programmes to) retention programmes focusing on the specific subjects/challenges as mentioned before.
At RWTH Aachen University (Germany) a special committee deals with exactly this matter. Within the framework of the “Challenge Excellence in Teaching” this “mentoring committee” is responsible for installing a retention programme to support and encourage students to manage their learning in order to maximise their potential, improve their performance and advance their career . Not least this mentoring programme can be an appropriate means to reduce student attrition .
When designing a mentoring programme for students, several questions appear: Who can act as a mentor? How can or must a programme like this be organised? What will be the main content? Is it possible to create a field manual for the mentors despite a broad diversity on the one hand concerning the students and on the other hand concerning size, subject etc. of the faculties? How and by whom can the mentors be trained? How can a huge programme like this be installed and evaluated? And last but not least: how can it be financed? All these questions have been thoroughly discussed by the committee and answers as well as solutions have been largely found at this stage: Field manuals are currently being created by the committee and specially trained psychologists, mentoring jobs are being created with the help of the so called “Bund-Länder-Programm”, where the committee has acquired additional financing etc.
The mentoring programme at RWTH Aachen University is based on a 3 year plan. In the first year, from the second quarter of 2010 to the second quarter of 2011, the conceptual design as mentioned before has been discussed and brought forward in a special mentoring committee consisting mainly of academic advisors as well as students. The second year is thought to serve as a year in which the mentoring programme will be established in the many different departments/faculties of the university. Finally, in the third year the first mentoring cycle can be evaluated based on a first insight into a “student reality” that will be gained by the mentors during the first run. This knowledge allows the tutors to check pervious assumptions and to – if necessary – adjust the mentoring programme to the needs of the students.