Be one of the BETR Project’s Volunteer STEM Mentors

This is an electronic mentoring community which provides an opportunity for business workforce members and retired STEM subject matter experts and STEM degree seekers. Students may receive undergraduate credit (Pending Approval) from Colorado State University-Pueblo using a powerful online collaboration application suite to mentor Prek-12 students and dislocated workers concerning STEM related questions.

Your role as a Mentor is a mix of friend and teacher. Your goal is to inspire and facilitate personal, academic, and career achievements in the participants for whom you mentor. These protégés are college-capable students and/or dislocated workers pursuing challenging STEM academic and career fields.

Do you have what it takes to be one of the virtual STEM Mentors?

The relationships you develop with your protégés become channels for the passage of information, advice, challenges, opportunities, and support STEM topics:

• Mentors share their knowledge, experiences, and wisdom.
• Mentors provide valuable opportunities by facilitating academic, career, and personal contacts.
• Mentors stimulate curiosity and build confidence by presenting new ideas, opportunities, and challenges.
• Mentors encourage growth and achievement by providing an open and supportive environment.
• Mentors help protégés discover STEM talents and interests and define and attain their goals.
• Mentors guide protégés in reaching academic, career, and personal goals. By sharing stories of achievement with protégés, mentors can become role models.

Who are STEM Mentors?

STEM Mentors may be college students, postsecondary faculty, retired professionals, and professionals in a variety of challenging academic and STEM-related career fields.
How do and protégés communicate?

Mentors and protégés communicate primarily through the use of an online communication infrastructure accessed through registration at our website while participating in the BETR Project’s Virtual Community. Online collaboration eliminates the challenges imposed by time, and distance. Frequent communication combined with personal contact at BETR sponsored events, facilitates personal, academic, and career achievement.

STEM Mentors are subscribed to several electronic discussion lists. These lists include:

• A forum where protégés and mentors interact.
• Mentors List - A discussion list for mentors.
• Educators List - A discussion list for mentors interacting with teachers and parents.

Mentoring Teams

As part of a special project, BETR is inviting Mentors with academic and/or professional backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields to participate in mentoring teams.

This effort is part of The BETR Project’s, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, which is funded by a Department of Labor Grant. Each mentoring team links students together with Mentors who are studying, teaching, and working in a STEM area similar to those the protégé is interested in pursuing. Ideally, mentoring team is composed of at least one high school student, one college student, and one STEM professional.