From the editor
“Feeling supported and having deep learning experiences during college means everything when it comes to long-term outcomes after college. Unfortunately, not many graduates receive a key element of that support while in college: having a mentor. And this is perhaps the biggest blown opportunity in the history of higher ed.”
—Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup Education
When the magazine team began discussing this issue, we knew early on that we wanted to write about mentoring. We didn’t set out to create a mentoring issue, but the more we spoke about it, the more we realized that the mentoring that goes on at FIU–and in our community on behalf of our students – could not be contained in a single article. Ultimately, we committed to what you hold in your hands, an entire magazine focused on mentoring.
In this issue, we highlight several types of mentoring relationships. Operating under the notion that no one type of mentoring is more important than the other, our team had lively exchanges when discussing which mentoring relationship should be re ected on the cover. Around the time these discussions were taking place in May, Time magazine came out with its annual 100 Most Influential People issue. And there it was, literally right before our eyes, an option we hadn’t considered and one FIU Magazine had never employed: multiple covers. As you’ve discovered, we opted for three front covers – one representing students as mentors, one representing the faculty-student mentoring relationship, and one representing the alumni/community-student mentoring relationship.
What we found was heartening. FIU is very much an institution where students can still get meaningful, one-on-one mentoring experiences. That’s no small feat at a university the size of FIU. Such a dynamic requires a commitment on the part of faculty, alumni and administration to provide these intensely rewarding experiences to our students.
Now for the disclaimer: This issue is not meant to be inclusive of every mentoring effort at FIU. I’m happy to say that would be impossible; we could never afford to print a magazine with so many pages. Rather, we focused on relationships that are representative of the thousands of Panthers who mentor or are mentored in one way or another, day in and day out.
Always Blue and Gold,
Karen Cochrane