This year will be the first time the Mentor of the Year award will be given to a faculty and/or staff person by the Provost Council at USF. The award will highlight the accomplishments of a nominee who goes above and beyond in his/her embodiment of the “Vision, Mission, and Values” of USF.
A challenging component about transitioning into college is finding out how to access good resources. It goes beyond making friends with your next- door neighbors and getting to know the best social scenes. Junior Ramsey Hanna looked back at his experience at USF as a freshman and said, “When I got here I already knew where certain parties happen and who to know, but it really wasn’t hard finding the adequate resources I needed to get to where I wanted to go. Developing a comfortable relationship with faculty members was easy.” Hanna said that his experience at USF is great due to the great help of his professors and advisors who made themselves accessible and helped him establish himself academically.
Provost Jim Wiser said, “We wanted to highlight the importance of advising and counseling and bring it to the attention of the community.” He explained the potential for two awards if the nominations allow, one for a faculty member of USF and another for a staff member. Every year a survey is given to graduating seniors in order to rate the quality of performance of faculty. Wiser pointed out that the quality is great according to recent surveys, but there is never anything done to congratulate the hard work of the great men and women that work at USF.
Although faculty have been great avenues for mentorship, there are a lot of staff members that are eligible for nomination. Alumnus Luis Cervantes from USF said, “I was a resident advisor when I was at USF and it requires a lot of dedication and the ability to want to be a resource for incoming freshmen. I would nominate somebody in that position for the award.”
Lara Hansen, assistant to the provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, is now accepting nominations for the Mentor of the Year Award. The submissions must be in letter format describing why the nominee deserves the award and must be received by 5 p.m. on Friday, April 10, 2009. A ceremony for the winners will be held on May 13.
