MentorNet

I moved into a nice studio apartment in San Jose the beginning of March. It's fully furnished and includes utilities, except broadband and cable. It's almost like a studio in a hotel, small fridge, toaster oven, microwave, and two burner stovetop. I've had to get a GPS so I can find my way around. I'm not familiar with the area and San Jose is cut up by at least 4 freeways.

I've been working straight out since I started at MentorNet. Lots of things to learn. It's a very complicated program with many facets. There's a lot of automation which is the only way a small staff could accomplish so much. There has to be to enable over 2000 mentoring partnerships so far this year (July 1- June 30). In the ten years since the program's inception there have been over 21,000 pairings.

MentorNet provides the infrastructure to connect post-secondary students in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) to industry professionals for One-on-One e-mentoring experiences. Mentors and proteges both complete a 34 item profile and then are matched with a bi-directional algorithm.

MentorNet has a coaching curriculum that is sent regularly to proteges and mentors based on the educational level of the protege.

Right now we need mentors in the bio sciences. We have proteges waiting for mentors. Just the opposite is true in the computer sciences where we have lots of mentors waiting for proteges.

For students to be eligible to be paired with a mentor they need to be attending one of our hundred-plus partner institutions, or be a student member of one of our partner professional societies.

We're not just looking for mentors and protege's we also are looking for financial support. If you know of a foundation or personal donor that would be interested in supporting our work please let me know.