WVU Mentoring: Your Time Is Priceless
By C. Michael Fulton
Everyone needs a helping hand from time to time, and WVU alumni are not only enthusiastic but are active in counseling students and alumni on how to find an internship, their first job, or a better job. Alumni mentoring is a vital part of our Mountaineer spirit, and we call on you to get involved—if you are not already.
How do I personally know the value of career mentoring? I have benefited twice from those who took the time to mentor me. First, as a sophomore at WVU at Parkersburg, I landed an internship at my hometown newspaper, and an editor with gold and blue in his veins shaped my journalistic development. The second time I was a senior and secured my first job through a WVU alumnus who came to the School of Journalism to hire for an entry-level position on Capitol Hill. Both experiences changed my life direction and taught me the incredible value of mentoring. There are thousands of stories like mine to be shared among WVU graduates, and our University and Alumni Association are creating many more success stories every day.
Alumni play an invaluable role in the West Virginia University community long after graduation, and mentoring is one of the most important contributions one can make to WVU.
How can you offer your time and talents as a mentor? In many ways—through your college at WVU, a local alumni chapter near you, at WVU career fairs, and/or your place of employment by hiring WVU students and alumni.
Mentoring occurs every day on campus when deans and professors bring together WVU alumni and friends with incredible career experiences and employment contacts to guide students. Many schools, including the School of Journalism, where I serve on the visiting committee, encourage graduates and leaders in the field to come back to campus to share their experiences and to meet with students whenever possible.
WVU alumni chapters are a perfect environment to foster mentoring experiences.
Perhaps an untapped resource that many students, and even young alumni, do not consider is the more than 160,000 proud alumni worldwide who are ready, willing, and more than able to offer career advice from their years of experience.
All over the country, chapters are establishing programs to benefit alumni. The National Capital Area Chapter developed a Mountaineer Career Solutions program that can give a WVU student or alumnus the benefit of multiple career experiences through chapter members who have signed up to help others. At a recent WVU Career Fair that the chapter held in downtown Washington, D.C., at the Mortgage Bankers Association, WVU alumni representatives from 17 companies met with 60 WVU business and economics students. Monthly networking luncheons and after-work happy hours hosted by alumni chapters throughout the country, including Atlanta, D.C., and Houston, offer alumni, students, and Parents Club members a chance to mentor or to be mentored by those they meet.
Our employers can also contribute. After hiring no less than 30 WVU graduates as interns or full-time employees at my company during the last 16 years, we created a formal GolinHarris Mountaineer Internship Program for two Journalism students each year. The internship comes with a stipend, hourly wage, and hands-on experience in public and government relations at one of the world’s largest communications companies. We have other paid internship positions year-round, but this is a coveted program and one we have found worthy of expanding.
No matter how you offer your mentoring skills to WVU students and alumni—just do it! An hour of your time could change the life of a student.
Mike Fulton, ’77 AA, WVU at Parkersburg, ’79 BSJ, is executive vice president at GolinHarris in Washington, D.C. He serves on the National Alumni Association Board of Directors and the Visiting Committee of the School of Journalism and is a past president of the National Capital Area Chapter of the WVU Alumni Association. His door is always open to WVU alumni and students needing career advice.