Call for Mentors: Spring 2013

The Academic SIG is piloting a virtual mentoring program pairing interested professionals in the field and college students working on projects to create content for the STC Technical Communication Body of Knowledge (BoK).

The goal of the BoK is to organize, make accessible, and connect the information necessary to train for and practice within the profession of technical and scientific communication. If you are not familiar with the BoK, please visit the site.

The BoK leadership has identified topic areas that need development within the BoK, and college students have expressed interest in researching and creating this content—hopefully under  the guidance of a subject matter expert in the field—like you!

If you would like to participate in a mentoring project with college students this spring, please look over the topic areas below, choose a topic of interest to you, and contact Sally Henschel by 15 February 2013 to be paired with a student.

Topic Areas for Mentoring Spring 2013:

  • Internationalization
  • Publication standards (print)
  • Publications standards (accessibility)
  • Publication standards (copyright/web)
  • Information development (tagging)
  • Information development (content management)
  • Information development (social/user-generated content)
  • Medical writing

FAQ

Is the mentoring relationship limited to the BoK project?

  • The BoK project is the main focus of the mentoring relationship—at least initially—because the project must be completed by the end of the Spring 2013 semester.  However, if you develop a rapport with your student mentee and would like to continue into a “general” virtual mentoring relationship after the BoK project is completed, we encourage you to do so. For example, many of the mentees likely will be graduating seniors, and we believe they would be very receptive to any mentoring you could provide on job search and placement and/or coaching during their entry into the profession.

If I want to mentor and contact the mentor coordinator, what happens next?

  • The program coordinator will pair you with a student mentee, and the professor working with the student will contact you and introduce you to the student. The student then will contact you to establish a schedule and expectations, provide you any needed information on the BoK, and explain his or her initial plans to research and organize the topic content.

What am I expected to do as a mentor for a BoK project?

  • Mentor the student during his or her research process, and provide the student any needed advice to adequately research and cover the topic. It is particularly important for you to provide guidance up front, such as pointing the student in the right direction for research by identifying acknowledged leaders in their field.
  • Coach the student in the outlining process and review and critique the outline before the student begins writing.
  • Review the student’s topic drafts and make suggestions for improvement. By doing this, you will be pursuing two goals: (1) increasing the student’s knowledge of the subject and (2) providing “quality assurance” throughout the process to ensure the finished project is at an appropriate professional level to be posted on the BoK bearing the Society’s brand. We realize there may still need to be some refinement before posting because we are not asking nor do we want you to assist the student in the actual research and writing (beyond planning the process and reviewing and critiquing the product).
  • Review the student’s topic drafts.

If I want to be a mentor or need more information, whom should I contact?

  • Contact the mentor coordinator, Sally Henschel, Midwestern State University.

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