Categories: Build Your Community | Recruit BIPOC Undergraduate Students | Recruit Mentors
Build Your Community
Recommended Timeline: 12 months before mentorship launch
Establishing potential partners and supporters early in the process will ensure necessary support as the project proceeds. Utilize listservs, personal networks, and Advisory Board members to recruit potential mentors, hosts for internships and site visits, and “friends”of the project. At this stage you are gauging general interest. Specific needs in each of these areas will emerge as the project continues.
NOTES FROM THE PILOT: We conducted our outreach through LinkedIn, We Here, professional associations like ReFORMA, APALA, and BCALA, and several library-focused Facebook groups.
Related Resources: Mentor Interest Form [PDF]
Recruit BIPOC Undergraduate Participants
Recommended Timeline: 6 months before mentorship launch
Determine how many students you will be able to work with. Identify institutional channels that will allow you to reach your intended audience. Undergraduates who will be at least two years away from graduation at the beginning of the program will be students who might be ready to think about graduate schools, but have not yet made concrete plans. Distribute your recruitment message. Select your participants.
NOTES FROM THE PILOT: We invited all students who participated in our focus groups during our research phase to apply to the mentorship program. We also used SJSU’s existing job-/internship-posting platform to recruit undergraduate students. Students filled out an interest form which collected information regarding their eligibility for the program as well as details that would help us to pair them with mentors according to their interests. We ultimately selected a cohort of 20 participants.
Related Resources: Student Interest Form [PDF]
Recruit Mentors; Pair with Undergraduates
Recommended Timeline: 3 months before mentorship launch
Mentorship is a key component of this project. Use information about your undergraduate participants’ majors and the types of librarianship they may be interested in to recruit and select mentors who will be a match for your students’ interests. One mentor can have more than one mentee.
NOTES FROM THE PILOT: Each of our mentors was paired with two or three mentees. We referred to these groupings as “pods.” Some pods chose to meet as pods, others had one-on-one meetings between each mentor and mentee.
Related Resources: Mentor Interest Form [PDF]