The mentoring program was introduced to our school in 2011. It is not only meant to counsel students with professors about overall information of school life, future career and employment, but like its name, it is also meant to maintain a lifelong teacher-student relationship, even after the student’s graduation or employment. As it is our university’s graduation requirement, students who entered our school after 2011 have to receive online or offline counseling with their academic adviser at least twice each semester, more than 14 times total. It is now 4 years later since the mentoring program started, and how do our university’s students use it and what do they think about it?



  The CBT reporters surveyed over 100 CBNU students about the mentoring program. 40% of students answered that they received counseling twice in a semester, 37% answered once, 13% answered none and 10% answered more than three times. Concerning the method of counseling, the students answered ‘group meeting’ at 66%, ‘individual counseling’ at 26% and ‘online counseling’ at 8%. One of the students who answered ‘group meeting’, Yoo Han-bin(’14, School of Civil Engineering), said that he usually has a group meeting with his academic adviser before going to the Civil Engineering MT. He said, “Counseling with my adviser to satisfy my graduation requirements is a burden to me, but the group meeting makes it easier for me,” and he said he prefers group meetings more.
  Half of the students answered ‘visiting my academic adviser was uncomfortable’ regarding the inconveniences of having counseling. Except for a few colleges that preassign academic advisers and reassign academic advisers after each student’s major is decided, most department students get assigned their academic adviser by the students’ assistant professors. Because the students have no choice about their academic adviser, most of the students feel uncomfortable when they visit their academic adviser, whom the students really don’t know well. An anonymous student who answered ‘visiting my academic adviser was uncomfortable’ said, “I never took my academic adviser’s class, so it is not easy to ask him to counsel me,” and he expressed his burden.
  Whether it was a positive or negative experience, the students’ opinions about the mentoring program were balanced. Most of the positive opinions by the students were ‘the mentoring program enables students to build a personal relationship with a professor’ or ‘students can have career counseling related to the student’s major’. On the other hand, most of the negative opinions by the students were ‘the mentoring program is mandatory and perfunctory, so students cannot have counseling sincerely’ or ‘students cannot have counseling with an academic adviser that the student wants’.
  Our university’s mentoring program’s team manager Lee Jong-hui(Section Chief, Student Affairs) said, “The professors also complain about the mentoring program because they are busy with research and lectures,” and he said that he knows the professors feel a burden as well as the students. However, he emphasized that if the program is not compulsory, there will be no communication at all between the students and the professors. He said that before the mentoring program started, only 10% of students had counseling with their academic adviser, and even worse, some students never met their academic adviser during or after school years. He said, “There are some students who get help from the mentoring program, and the program was a large contribution toward winning first place in the National University Student Satisfaction Assessment last year, so I’m sure that our students’ satisfaction will increase more due to the mentoring program.” Also, he said that Student Affairs will consistently eliminate inconveniences between the professors and the students to help keep it going.
  The team manager, Lee Jong-hui, highly recommended online counseling to the students who feel that counseling with a professor is uncomfortable. Because online counseling is not in use at all, he suggested to the students to ask a question to a professor online because it has no time constraints and the professors can answer at a later date. Also, he expressed his wish that the students should not feel any burden about it because there are various ways to fulfill the mentoring program graduation requirement. The first way is to take a substitution class. If seniors, who are in their 7th or 8th semester, complete this class, it can be admitted as the graduation requirement’s fulfillment. The second way is to receive counseling with other advisers, such as our university’s Headquarters of Employment Strategy & Support’s advisers or other majors’ professors. He said, “If a student in the College of Humanities has an interest in a car project and if there is a professor who is well acquainted with cars in School of Mechanical Engineering, the student can visit the professor and receive counseling with him.” Also, he added that students with their own personal major, hobby or lifestyle can receive counseling with any professor they want.
  In accordance with various regulations of each school or department, there are various ways to assign an academic adviser to students, but it still seems that the students feel that they have no right of choice. If students can choose their preferred professors, a situation where a professor has more students to take care of than other professors could happen, so it is inevitable that the students will feel they have no right of choice. Nevertheless, the mentoring program is still ongoing to help our students. I hope the students don’t think the mentoring program is just burdensome, and I hope the students will use it actively so that it can help to smooth their university lives.

By Min Tae-kwan
tk36@cbnu.ac.kr