Mentorship Pods

Mentor Pod Perspective

Student Perspective: it will create essential networking connections between the students and the professionals. Students will get their questions answered and learn more about the different fields they could be working in.

Professional Perspective: creates connections across the state and passes on their knowledge to future generations.

Set-up

Student Board Member: contact the WA state student chapters, and use the NWACDA Facebook page to get in contact with the students who are a part of the WA-ACDA who would like be a part of this mentoring program.

Student Youth and Activities Coordinator and the Student Board Member: contact the directors of the WA-ACDA via email and compile a list of the directors who are interested in being a mentor. The mentors will be organized based on their number of years in the field.

Creating the mentoring pods

These pods will consist of the following group of people:

1 student member
1 person having, at most, 3 years experience in the field
1 person having 3-10 years in the field
1 person having 10-25 years in the field
1 person having 25 years or more or who are retired in the field
(When starting this program there may be some pods that have missing members until we get more people involved.)

Longevity

By creating these pods rather than one on one encounters between a student and mentor, we are creating more resources and making the work load easier in the future. Every few years we can add a new student to an already created pod so that they will continue to grow with time.

Ideally we would have the majority of these pods created before SI so that one of the meal times could be dedicated to meeting with the other people who are in your pod.

The Student Board Member would be in charge of creating these pods based on random assignment. The goal of this random assignment would be to create diversity in every pod. They’ll have the greatest diversity based on years of experience in the field and involvement in the Four ACDA Pillars. People rarely end up with the position they want right away, so this will give students and professionals a wide range of resources in different directing positions. It will also help bring people together from all over the state, making WA-ACDA a more connected membership.

It would be the job of the Student Board Member, along with the Student Youth and Activities Coordinator, to keep a record of these pods, along with everyone’s contact information. These two board members would also be in charge of updating these pods by June 31 every year. This way the board will be able to plan one of the SI mealtimes as a meet and greet for new pod members.

Cost

There is no budget needed for this proposal. There is no real money that needs to be committed to this project, just time.