Your mentee should send you an email, as the first point of contact, within about one week of you receiving their details.
If you haven’t heard from them by the deadline specified in the email you will receive with their details, please reach out to them directly (they may be feeling nervous!). If you still don't hear from them after a week or so then please let us know by contacting us at mentoring@contacts.bham.ac.uk. We will then follow-up with the mentee.

Your first few interactions are about getting to know each other and having a general conversation about the mentee’s current situation.
There is a chance that less confident students will feel intimidated or nervous about meeting you, so please be mindful of this in your first meeting and try to make them feel at ease.
A starting point may be finding common interests or values, for example you could share stories of your experience as a student to find common ground.

Your first meeting will involve:

Getting to know each other’s background and areas of interests
Agreeing your preferred communication methods (and location)
Agreeing your frequency of contact – we recommend meeting once a month for around an hour (this can be face to face or virtually). Agree how you are going to keep in contact inbetween meetings too.
Deciding upon the mentoring goals – what do you both hope to gain from the mentoring relationship

You can use our mentoring agreement to outline how you will communicate, how long meetings will last and also how often you will interact. We recommend filling out a copy within one of your first interactions.

By managing the expectations for the relationship, both parties are then clear about how, when and how often they will interact. This is where you can let your mentee know which communication methods they should use to keep in contact with you and how much notice you require before scheduling a meeting.

Recommended locations on campus

If you are both able to meet on campus, you could consider the following:

Aston Webb - Bramall café
Sports Centre - Costa
Muirhead Tower café
Guild of Students - Costa or reception area
Library - Ground Floor Café

To view these locations, please see our Edgbaston Campus Map (PDF).