WATERVILLE, May 12--Thomas College's Peer Mentoring Program
has been approved for the College Reading and Learning
Association (CRLA) Level 1(general) certification. Being
certified under CRLA's International Mentoring Program
Certification process demonstrates that the Thomas College Peer
Mentor Program offers a level of professionalism and quality for
both the mentors and the first-year students they serve.
The peer mentoring program matches first-year students with
returning matriculated students who have performed well in all
aspects of their lives at Thomas. The peer mentors work
alongside mentees and act as leaders, guides, and coaches
helping the first-year students to acclimate to academic and
social life at the College. They assist students with anything
from clarification of faculty expectations to answering
questions about the physical aspects of the campus.
To be certified by the CRLA, a mentoring program must prove that it is
not only aligned with CRLA standards, but also that it provides
extensive training, evaluation, and support for mentors. Mentors
must also complete 50 hours of mentoring before they can become
certified. The College's initial certification period, from
March 2009 to March 2010, will be followed by another review
before they are granted a three-year certification. "We are
confident that we can maintain the quality of the program, given
Thomas College's campus-wide history of excellence and its
support for retention efforts," said Debbie Cunningham, Dean of
Retention Services at Thomas.
This certification means that Thomas students can be confident that the service they are
receiving meets high standards. "Although we are excited about
becoming certified through CRLA, we are even more excited about
what this means for not only the mentors, but the students they
serve. Quality mentorship is a wonderful addition to the
first-year experience at Thomas College. We are striving to do
all we can to be sure all students transition well into their
first year of college," said Sherry Pineau, Director of First
Year Initiatives.
Cunningham echoes that it is not the certification, but the excellence of the program of itself that
should be celebrated. "While we are proud of the certification,
we have not forgotten that what makes the peer mentoring program
at Thomas College effective is not the certification or the
standards it represents, but the peer mentors themselves and the
way in which they took on the challenge of delivering an
entirely new program at Thomas College," said Cunningham. For
more information, contact Sherry Pineau at 859-1209 or
pineaus@thomas.edu.
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