Leading the UBC Dental Hygiene Peer Mentorship Program

When I was in my first year at UBC, I was assigned a peer mentor from the second year of my program and she helped me navigate through a lot of academic and emotional stress. Her mentorship inspired me to become a peer mentor myself in my second and third year. These two years that I served as a mentor allowed me to effectively evolve my interpersonal skills and leadership ability. I really enjoyed spending time with my younger peers and helping them build community amongst the rest of the student body. In my fourth year, the faculty leader for the mentorship program unexpectedly transferred to a different faculty, which left the future of the program at risk for being lost in the turnover. I saw this both as a duty and an opportunity for me to assume a leadership role, so I volunteered to coordinate the mentorship program myself that year. Since I needed to have a faculty leader in order to get funding, I wrote up an outline of the program (see the document below) and pitched it to the the faculty in order to gain support. The faculty lead that I recruited had high praises for the program at the end of the year and she reported that she would be happy to continue to support it for future years. My vision for this program after I graduated was to have a fourth year mentor take over my role. I wanted this opportunity to be passed down from year to year to a student who felt particularly passionate about mentorship and keeping the values of the program alive.

Pictured: UBC dental hygiene class of 2019 at a mentorship event

DHDP-Peer-Mentorship-Program-Manual.docx

Download DOCX • 27KB

#leadership #communication