Abstract:

While mentoring programs guide engineering students in academic issues, there are a lack of information regarding the actual issues that concern graduated students that look for a job and professional engineers in a company. A mentoring program that brings and coordinates the advice of professors, graduated students and professionals mentors can contribute to provide a more adequate contents to the students and reduce the time to get a job. It is also a way to strength the relationship between university and companies. In the frame of the European project HEIBus (Smart HEI-Business collaboration for skills and competitiveness), we develop, in collaboration with local companies, a mentoring program for engineering students. Our model is based on programming a set of activities, mainly tailored lectures, guide visits, job fairs and group-individual mentoring meetings, to help first-courses students to understand what an engineer does, and senior students to get first-hand information about the engineering market and how to fit their curricula to its demands. According to the opinion surveys fulfil after the application of this program, the students suggest to increase the number and length of mentoring and technical workshops.

Keywords:

Mentoring, Higher Education, Companies.