Abstract
University students face situations throughout their careers that are sometimes difficult to overcome due to their lack of experience or preparation. Mentoring programs in university education have been proven to be a great accompaniment tool to solve these difficulties in addition to helping students’ personal and professional development. Our study aimed to show the complete mentoring process that accompanies students in the most crucial stages of their university education at the School of Mines and Energy of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Three stages of interest were identified in which mentoring projects have been implemented through training activities at the Unit of Social Entrepreneurship, Ethics and Values in Engineering (UESEVI). At the beginning of their studies, two welcome actions are offered: Mentor and Monitor projects that provide administrative and academic support; during the development of their studies, the Mentoring with Energy project offers professional tutoring that helps students in their incorporation into the labor market and provides them with tools to select a specialty; and in the last stage, professional accompaniment is provided by the Gray Angels project that helps students to develop their future careers. The activities of UESEVI are a strategy in our School to guarantee the development of soft skills and compliance with quality education processes. The usefulness of these programs can be measured through the participation and interest of the students. A positive evolution of these projects has been observed over the years. They have been growing according to the demand and needs detected in the successive evaluations of the programs.
Highlights
IntroductionWith the establishment of the European Higher Education Area, universities have committed to the design and organization of a welcoming and orientation plan which will allow new students to move into this new stage and minimize dropout situations generated by academic failure [1]
We will describe the results obtained for every project separately, taking into account the indicators studied
Regarding the number of tutors (Gray Angels), we have established a first contact with the Engineering Institute of Spain (IIE), since they already have a similar program for one year and the Mining Engineers Association where there is a high interest in participating in the program. This conclusions section will be divided into a first part about reflections on the program and a second part on the difficulties detected during the development
Summary
With the establishment of the European Higher Education Area, universities have committed to the design and organization of a welcoming and orientation plan which will allow new students to move into this new stage and minimize dropout situations generated by academic failure [1]. In order to fulfill this goal, mentoring projects have appeared which ease students’ transition from high school to university by guiding them in academic, administrative, and social aspects [2]. Mentoring is an insightful process in which the protege acquires and applies the mentor’s wisdom, but it is a supportive, protective process to ease difficult transitions. In the transition phase to higher education, peer mentoring provides a climate of greater confidence in which to resolve such situations, smooth the path, take advantage of the resources, and recognize opportunities [7]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
