James Dorset and Lana Seiler have discussed setting up an International Mentorship program for the past year. This semester, they are finally running a trial session.

The goal behind the program is to help international students adjust to life in Ames by pairing them up with American students.

The American mentor is there to answer questions and provide at least one familiar face in the crowd of more than 30,000 ISU students and faculty.

Unfortunately neither Dorset, who is director of the International Student Scholars Office, or Seiler, the administrative specialist for the International Student Scholars Office, had the time to devote to the kind of program they wanted to create.

Then the Government of the Student Body voted to fund the position of student coordinator, currently filled by Paul Kyungjoon Chung, senior in management.

Having a student coordinator for the program meant that Dorset and Seiler now had enough staff to help get it off the ground.

“We visited a few other mentorship programs on campus to get an idea of how we wanted to structure our program,” Dorset said.

After designing the infrastructure of the International Mentorship Program, a mass email was sent out during Winter Break asking both international and American students to apply to the program.

Preference was given to international students who were spending their first semester at Iowa State, but mentors had to be upperclassmen.

Dorset and Seiler combed through the applications and tried their best to match students to each other based on a number of factors such as gender, age and interests. They assigned four international students to two American students.

“We decided not to have one to one groups,” Dorset said. “If we did that and the connection isn’t right, then that group never gets off the ground. If several students are together, no one person has to carry the weight. And students not confident of their English don’t have to do all the talking.”

The student groups are asked to meet four times per semester. When the groups do meet, they check in via a Google spreadsheet that Chung checks on periodically.

If Chung sees that certain groups have not met in a while, it is his responsibility to check on those pairings and make sure everything is going well.

As for what kind of meetings the group has, the students have options.

“They can meet outside of class and do pretty much anything they want,” Seiler said. “They can also attend campus events, like the Global Gala, instead. So if they go to two campus events, they only have to meet two times.”

One thing that really surprised Seiler about this program is the mentors themselves.

“The mentors are very committed. They really care about their mentees,” Seiler said.

The program depends heavily on the student coordinator to help oversee the students. So far, GSB has only committed money to fund the position for one semester.

“There’s a good chance we will continue to be funded,” Seiler said.

Both Dorset and Seiler agree that American students who participate as mentors benefit significantly as well.

“We think it’s a very valuable program. It’ll help both international and American students to develop friendships. All to the benefit of Iowa State,” Dorset said.