Summer Steps: Keep in Touch with Your Mentors
Connecting with world-class faculty is one great benefit of being a Stanford student. Don’t miss out on this opportunity! Whether you have just finished your freshman year or have already started a coterm, it is always a good idea to have several people who know you well and can serve as your mentors for academic endeavors both inside and outside of the classroom. Summer is a great time to think about and keep in touch with your mentors on campus.
How to Keep in Touch with Your Mentors
As you may remember from your earliest days on campus, all Stanford students are strongly encouraged to get to know multiple faculty members and have multiple mentors. Often the basis for connecting with faculty is a shared fascination in a research topic or more general academic interest. One perk of really getting to know faculty is that they may serve as a future writer for a letter of recommendation.
So….you would like to find a mentor but never talked with a faculty member before? Don’t despair! Summer is a great time to identify those faculty who you would like to get to know better in the upcoming year. Plan to take advantage of Faculty Night. Check out next year’s Introsems and apply to the ones that appeal to you the most. Scan faculty profiles for your prospective major through the department’s website, begin to identify faculty whose research interests align with your own, and plan to take their course in the upcoming year.
Already have a faculty mentor? Reach out! Update them on what you’re doing this summer and how the past school year went. Make plans to re-connect when you’re back on campus in the Fall (perhaps at Faculty Night in the dining hall). Next year, try to connect with an additional faculty member!
