Welcome

Mentors and Students,

Welcome! I'm excited about beginning another semester and some of the social networking options that have been added to the course this year. If you are new to the course, please spend a few minutes looking around at the different tools on the page.

How to stay connected
If you would like to subscribe to the site feed, you are able to do so via a feed reader or e-mail using the subscription options to the right. You are also able to be notified of new posts by joining the WUSOP eMentor group on Facebook or following the feed on Twitter. Both of these social networking options are linked on the right. If none of these options appeal (or make sense) to you, then you're welcome to just check back on the blog once or twice a week to see if anything new has been added.

How it's going to work
The course meets on Tuesday mornings at 9:00 AM ET.  The students and I will spend the first half of the class (~ 25 minutes) wrapping up the previous topic and the second half of class introducing the new topic.  The students will then be asked to initiate dialogue with the mentors via comments on the blog.  Mentors are encouraged to respond to these comments or simply provide their opinion on the topic in general.  The follow-up discussions are based largely on mentor comments and feedback on the topic.  (Mentors, we REALLY need you to commit to participating.  The students want to hear from all of you, not just from me.  They need to hear opinions that have been influenced by different experiences.  I cannot manufacture this - I need your help if this is going to be successful.)

The students then reflect and summarize their thoughts on the topic on a weekly basis.  Again, this is much more meaningful if they've heard from a number of the mentors on the topic.

We will do this each week for the entire Fall semester.  I hope you're as excited as I am for the course to begin.  Best wishes for a great semester and thank you for your participation!