Arriving at Georgia Tech can be overwhelming for any freshman, especially when they’re entering a program as challenging as biomedical engineering. That’s why Joe Le Doux, BME’s Executive Director for Learning and Student Experience, is making sure that each incoming freshman has a mentor.

"We want to help students who are struggling and we want to help students reach beyond what they would normally be able to do within the curriculum,” says Le Doux. “We want to increase interaction between the students and between students and faculty members."

With about 400 incoming freshmen in the program this year Le Doux was hoping to have about 80 upperclassmen volunteer to be mentors. Instead he has more than 130, each of which in turn is being assigned an alumni mentor via the Student Alumni Association’s Mentor Jackets program. Together each alumni mentor, student mentor, and a group of freshman mentees will constitute what Le Doux is calling a ‘mentor family.’

"We're leveraging the excellent programs over at the SAA because we think it's very valuable, particularly for BME's since the field is so broad. Last year we had about 80 students do it with no incentive and we have already vastly exceeded that. So we're helping grow the Mentor Jackets programs and we've recruited alumni."

Matches between freshmen and their upper classmen mentors were made via a logistically challenging process in which freshmen completed surveys during FASET and then had the results loaded into a computer program that listed each mentor and their interests, minus their name and email address. A ‘shopping weekend’ was held during which students could pick their mentor based on matching interests on a first come, first served basis with each mentor being paired with about three mentees. Two third of the participants went through the process on their own with Le Doux and his staff matching up the remaining third.

To help streamline the process for next year Le Doux recruited a team of computational media students to build a new computer program as a Capstone Design project. If all goes well it will be offered to the Mentor Jackets and other mentoring programs on campus to help facilitate their matching processes as well.

The first event of the year was held on the first weekend of the semester, with more than 300 students showing up for food, games, and a table fair hosted by the BME student organizations. Feedback has nothing but positive, and students are excited to be helping each other.

“The hope is that the freshmen will stay on as mentors for next year's new students, and that as participants graduate from Tech they will participate as alumni,” said Le Doux.

Based on the early response it doesn’t sound like keep students involved is going to be a problem.

Note: In addition to the new mentoring program BME has recently announced the launch of the BME Learning Commons which will turn the fourth floor of the Whitaker Building into a dedicated learning space for students.