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Alumni-in-residence: Among the many keen and excited new faces who moved into residence at Trent at the beginning of September, there were two who had done it all before - thirty years before, in fact. Cheryl and Bryan Davies have moved in to Champlain College's guest apartment to begin a year as alumni-in-residence, a new initiative of the College and the Alumni Association that is sure to be a major factor in bridging the gap between today's alumni and the alumni of the future. In fact, the program is unprecedented, not only at Trent, but across the country. The central aim of the alumni-in-residence project is to raise awareness of the Alumni Association's role in providing valuable liaison with the University and its current students by pairing students up with an alumni mentor who can provide advice and guidance. According to Cheryl, known to everyone as the president of the Alumni Association (as well as an actor, director, and a singer with the band Shame on the Moon), such contact between current students and alumni can give students pointers on careers, graduate studies, and general direction for the future. So how will the alumni-in-residence program make this happen? "My goal is to build enthusiasm among the students," says Cheryl. "If the students are excited about the mentoring program, everything else will fall into place." Cheryl and Bryan will work on building this enthusiasm over the course of a year based at Champlain, but their "territory" is the entire university. Beginning in Intro Week, the Davies have been introducing students to the mentoring program while acting as mentors themselves. They encourage students to visit them in residence, and they have been organizing informal ways of letting students know what the program is all about. As Cheryl says, just getting students and alumni involved in such an innovative program has been one of her biggest challenges. Such a challenge came from two directions. The mentoring program itself was one of the priorities established at an Alumni Council planning retreat in November 1997. It was identiŜed as one of the top "member needs" for both students and alumni. Alumni Council member Rod Cumming '87 has been working on the project since that time, and while interest in the mentoring program has been periodically strong, it needs a boost to get it firmly off the ground. As for the alumni-in-residence program, according to Cheryl, Champlain College master Stephen Brown was the "brainchild" behind it, encouraging her and Bryan to consider spending a year "back" in residence to help establish closer ties between the University and its growing number of successful graduates. The connection with the college system also comes at a pivotal time in the history of the colleges. The current academic year has seen a marked centralization of residence, food, and student service operations, and the alumni-in-residence program is an attempt to retain some of the elements that have made the college system important in the lives of so many Trent students. But while many will remember the stimulation that artists- and writers-in-residence provided them during their time on campus, the alumni-in-residence program goes beyond the colleges. As one of the five-year goals of the program states, the mentoring program should be known across campus in that time, greatly raising the profile of the Alumni Association (which, after all, the typical undergraduate student does not hear about until graduation day). Cheryl and Bryan will provide an alumni presence on campus every day, sharing meals and getting involved in all aspects of residence life, from speaker series to college weekends, and particularly during the exciting proposed Trent Unplugged reading week program. Cheryl herself is embracing the challenge with her trademark enthusiasm. Few would relish the prospect, one would think, of returning to residence after several years in the "real world," with her own house and a busy family life; however, Cheryl has been looking forward to getting away from all that for a while. She jokes that she's glad to get away from cooking, but more importantly she's excited about working so closely with young people, helping to shape their future direction, finding out what they want, and sharing her own experiences as an alumna. She feels she has already promoted the alumni presence on campus through the fact that she's been one of the few association presidents based in Peterborough. Actually living on the Trent campus will be even more conducive to enhancing the alumni influence in the lives of current students. Cheryl and Bryan also plan to share their talents with students during their time on campus: Cheryl will oŭer workshops in theatre while Bryan is organizing entrepreneurial and business workshops. Cheryl notes that introducing mentoring to Trent in this way is timely. At a time when Trent, like other post-secondary institutions, is becoming more accountable to the public and even more concerned with recruitment and retention of students, giving students the opportunity to establish a support network from the very first year is crucial. As the future after a Trent degree becomes more of a concern to students than ever before, the time is right for alumni mentoring - giving students someone to talk to about careers and postgraduate opportunities as they plan their academic programs. But Cheryl stresses that the mentoring program is not intended to set students up in jobs; instead, it is designed to help students establish valuable contacts that could help them shape their future: "This is not about students getting a sure job after they graduate - it's about building positive and ongoing communication with someone who's experienced Trent and life after it." Once the project is in full swing, students will be able to access the mentoring database on-line from anywhere in the world. Cheryl predicts that many alumni and students will develop an e-mail mentoring relationship, something which should appeal to students and alumni alike, especially with everyone's busy schedules - this "virtual" mentoring environment can enable alumni from far away to retain an active Trent connection that might otherwise be difficult even to undertake. And as the database becomes established on the alumni web pages, the aim is to make the pairing of students with mentors easier by allowing a sort on a variety of factors such as region and career. Cheryl encourages all levels of involvement, from a casual contact over the Internet to regular get-togethers: "Alumni can get as involved as they want; the mentoring program is designed to be ŝexible and accommodating for everybody." Cheryl and Bryan's term as alumni-in-residence is for one school year, and there's no long-term plan to extend the residence program further. However, if this pilot project works Cheryl foresees a future for such ventures at Trent, as long as there's a clear project to work on. For now, the challenge facing the Davies is an exciting and groundbreaking one - one which should revolutionize the nature of alumni-student relations. It should prepare today's students to enter their alumni careers with more knowledge of what lies ahead, as well as a strong support network of business and personal contacts. Want to know more or get involved? Sign up as a mentor on the Alumni Association web site (www.trentu.ca/alumni/mentoring.html) or call the toll-free number. Share your post-Trent experiences with someone who really needs some direction or guidance (remember what it was like?) - it could make all the difference in the world. | |
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