For this last session we are pleased to be joined by representatives from Columbia’s International Student Advisory Board. We will aim to foster discussion with a question and answer panel, calibrating the insights gained in the prior two sessions with the viewpoint of international undergraduate students.
Furthermore, we will approach a new topic for discussion - the question of student mentoring. Mentoring is understood differently in different educational traditions, and students and teachers may come with diverging views of what a mentoring relationship involves and where it is to be expected. Successfully navigating this terrain is of especial importance in fostering the success of international students. We aim to explore techniques for developing mentoring relationships with cultural sensitivity across the boundaries of origin.
This is session three in a three-part learning community series, "Columbia International: Cultural Diversity Among Teachers and Students," that explores the benefits for student learning that arise from an instructor’s ability to draw on a diversity of knowledge and experience in the classroom, and to assess the challenges that arise for teachers in preparing their classes whilst avoiding hasty assumptions regarding shared prior knowledge.