Barbara Griffin, Mentor

The following post is written by Barbara Griffin. Barbara is the West Virginia Regents Bachelor of Arts Program Manager and Senior Advisor at West Virginia University. She served as a mentor to Seeta Rees who wrote about her mentorship program experience in an earlier blog post.

It's been almost two weeks since our mentorship program pairs first met during the NACADA 2018 Region 2 Conference. Have you corresponded via email? Have you set your first meeting? Have you shared resources? Now's a great time to reach out and keep the relationship going!

Read on to learn more about Barbara's experience as a mentor!
My Name is Barbara Griffin, West Virginia Regents Bachelor of Arts Program Manager/Senior Advisor with the College of Education and Human Services.

I have been a NACADA member for one year, awarded Excellence in Advising Award16-17, Attended Region 2 Conference 16-17 where I was selected as Mentor for Mentor/Mentee program.

The NACADA conference was very humbling, informative, and awe-inspiring seeing advisors all over the region who share the same values and their expertise with new ideas and findings. At the conference I was paired with Dr. Rees, whom I find after many monthly conversations, very knowledgeable in her field. We compared our work and realized our student load, values, management, and communication skills were very similar. My student population is non-traditional older adults compared to her traditional group and was fun to see the similarities and differences we face on a given day. We found that advising was not just a job, but a career. I believe the Mentor/Mentee program is an asset to the conference and advising world and both mentor/mentee learn from each other by bringing in fresh ideas, concepts and research for future use.

Dr. Rees and I hope to attend the conference held in Phoenix in the Fall.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to share my Mentor/Mentee experience.