Honors College Launches Alumni Mentorship Program

The Farquhar Honors College alumni mentorship program has created lasting relationships between honors students and alumni. Launched during the winter semester, the program connected students with alumni mentors with similar career interests who could help them achieve their professional and academic goals for the year.

Meeting every month over Zoom, alumni were able to advise their assigned students on everything from mental health and stress management to college and career advice. Some students were even fortunate enough to receive special opportunities from their mentors like research, publication, and shadowing experience.

For Ruthie Fogel, this was an especially lucky match, as her mentor Mariam Haroun, D.M.D., is a practicing orthodontist in her hometown. As an aspiring orthodontist herself, Fogel was able to shadow her mentor every week over the summer.

“Shadowing [Dr. Haroun] was a very valuable and rewarding experience . . . Her dedication to the art and science of orthodontics has motivated and inspired me to keep dreaming of attending dental school and pursuing orthodontics!” said Fogel, a sophomore engineering major. “A big takeaway from the alumni mentorship program is that it taught me to try new things, to always be curious of the unknown, and to be unafraid to step outside of one’s comfort zone.”

For alumni, the voluntary program gave them a meaningful way to stay connected to the college and help shape the paths of current honors students.

“These mentees are so mature and bright, and they’re involved in so many aspects of education, which is so wonderful to witness,” said Tia Cifu, a class of 2017 honors alumna with a B.S. in mathematics and an M.B.A from NSU. “I’m very proud to be an alum of this program.”

The program will run each year with mentoring relationships lasting for the entire academic year. The next round of the program will begin this fall.

“As someone who is considering pursuing a Ph.D. directly out of undergrad, [my mentor] was a perfect match for me because we were able to talk about her experiences, and I was able to see what life looks [like] for someone who was in my shoes not so long ago,” said Courtney White, a senior chemistry and marine biology major. “Mentor-mentee relationships are special connections, and I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to establish a relationship with someone who can provide me with a point of view I didn’t have access to before.”

Posted 09/25/23