How Bath Spa University utilised PushFar for their ‘MentorMe’ program.
This case study explores the challenges faced by Bath Spa University, the solutions PushFar offer and the results of implementing a mentoring program.
An introduction
Bath Spa University is a public university situated in Bath, England and home to 8,000 students. It specialises in creative subjects and courses from foundation level to post-grad and research.
Bath Spa University (BSU) want to broaden their students knowledge in terms of career goals, whilst also developing the knowledge skills and personal qualities that are valued by employers.
They have been matching students with relevant industry professionals through their careers team for the past 8 or 9 years.
BSU wanted a way to bridge the gap between university and work, for students. They recognise that now even with a degree it can be challenging for them to land their first job after university.
BSU believe students need to network to be successful and mentoring is a great way to learn how to do this and build those first few contacts.
BSU wanted networking to be more actionable and accessable.
“It has been great to be able to speak to someone in the industry, and have the opportunity to be given tips and advice”
Student, Bath Spa University
The Challenges
Even with a varied careers team, it is impossible to have an expert for a student to talk to with experience in every career path.
The matching of students to industry professionals was time-consuming. They needed to find a platform to take over from their “million spreadsheets”.
Bath Spa University were doing all the recruiting of industry professionals and it was important that the mentoring program reflected industry standards.
They needed support in building a mentoring culture to ensure they could recruit enough mentors for the program.
Due to the pandemic, hosting large networking events on the campus was near on impossible. They needed a way for mentors and mentees to connect remotely without giving out personal information ie. emails and phone numbers.
BSU wanted to give all students who do no have much confidence a safe space to have one-on-one conversations.
The Solution
The PushFar team were friendly and honest throughout the whole process. Setting realistic expectations and supporting the BSU team every step of the way.
PushFar was a speedy solution to get up and running and had a straightforward onboarding process.
PushFar’s admin matching functionality allows the BSU careers team to manually match those students who lack confidence or need more guidance with a mentor. Taking the burden off the students.
PushFar provides an all in one solution for mentoring with everything in one place for the mentors and mentees.
The User Experience (UX) and Interface (UI) looks professional which supports the BSU careers team in keeping all their mentoring relationships formal.
PushFar’s video calling funtionality provided a convinent and simple solution to centralising all communication between BSU students and external industry professional mentors.
The Results
Bath Spa University’s ‘MentorMe’ program is sucessfully helping students bridge the gap between structured university life and the workplace.
They have 164 mentees and 80 mentors.
Initially, the program was going to be for students who met the criteria, but due to the success and popularity of the program, it’s now rolled out to all of the 2nd and 3rd-year students.
100% of students provided positive feedback about their mentoring experience.
Bath Spa University uses the reports extracted from PushFar to demonstrate success.
“PushFar were the easiest to talk to out of all the people we spoke to about mentoring solutions”
Bath Spa University
What’s Next?
Bath Spa University is aiming to make 200-250 mentoring matches per year.
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