The Mentor Program of Aalborg University

Aalborg University is situated in the northern part of Jutland, Denmark. The faculty of Engineering and Science holds around 5000 students. At the university the curriculum for the education in engineering as well as in natural science is project organized studies. The projects can be design-oriented problems, which can be solved by theories and knowledge from lectures or it can be problem-oriented work dealing with unsolved problems in science and industry. In many ways the project work reflects the work process in an industrial company. A project-group consists of 4 to 6 students. Within the traditional classical engineering disciplines as electrical, electronic, mechanic and civil engineering the rate of female students is about 15% and it is going down. In addition the drop out rate of female students has been double the rate of male students. Consequently a pilot mentoring program for these students was established during the summer of 1998. This paper is based on the experiences we have obtained during the first pilot mentor program at Aalborg University. In the paper we will at first present the mentor program which is inspired from the Aalborg University tradition of group work, and followed by mainly e-mail correspondence and secondly some of the issues which have been raised during our conversations and evaluations with the participating students and mentors will be given. Finally we will present a number of questions which we will invite you all to discuss in groups and in plenum.