The Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering program aims to foster connections between freshmen and upperclassmen, by providing first year students with a mentor who can guide them through their inaugural year of college. The mentoring program allows freshmen to have guidance when selecting classes, joining extracurriculars, and determining which areas of biomedical engineering are of interest to them. This past year, each incoming student filled out a survey regarding their academic and personal interests, as well as their goals for the future. Upperclassmen provided similar information, which was used in order to match them to the freshmen. Each mentor and mentee pair was assigned a group with whom they could attend larger mentoring events with, overall creating meaningful and memorable relationships. The mentoring program provides resources on studying, classes, finding research opportunities, joining engineering design teams, and other important tools to navigate life as a biomedical engineer at Johns Hopkins. New activities for the mentoring program included building connections with young alumni through establishing an accessible young alumni network. This was made more accessible to students via the newsletter and advertising of young alumni events during the larger university-sponsored alumni weekend.

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October Mentoring Meetings

Mentors hold in-person check-ins with their assigned mentees at a time convenient to them. The October resources focus on the design team application process, picking a design team, and the application timeline for internships in industry. There are also specific planning resources such as a template 4-year plan. Spring Registration Information Session.This event was a panel for BME students who were unsure what courses to register for during the spring semester. The panel featured upperclassmen representatives across all the focus areas and gave students a chance to ask about specific classes they are interested in.

 

November/December Mentoring Meetings

Mentors hold in-person check-ins with their assigned mentees at a time convenient to them. The suggested talking points included summer opportunities (research, study abroad, internships, etc.), holiday events around Baltimore, reminders about Thanksgiving break, tips for finals, and advice for establishing a research position in the spring. End of Semester Goal Setting and Reflection Collaborating with the Life Design Lab (career center at Johns Hopkins), the mentoring program held a final reflection and goal setting event open to all mentors and mentees in the program. Starting from what went well during the semester and

moving to what could be done better in the spring. There was also food provided and time to socialize among the attendees.

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February Mentoring Meeting

The spring semester begins the transition from mentoring current Freshmen to organizing resources for next semester and training the next round of mentors. All of the attendees had applied to become mentors. Everyone introduced themselves, we did a brief icebreaker, and outlined expectations for the mentors. To begin the planning for the next incoming class, we broke into small groups to discuss the best

part, worst part, and what people were excited about during each part of the fall semester (focusing on the first-year experience).

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March Mentoring Meeting

Based on the responses from the February meeting, mentors were split into groups and assigned action items to edit and create resources to address what they had struggled with or enjoyed during the fall semester. These resources were added to

the resources from last year. During the March meeting, each group briefly presented the updates they had made. After the presentations, the floor opened for feedback and suggestions from the other groups. Feedback was also collected anonymously in a feedback form. After the meeting, this feedback was compiled and provided to each

group to make the relevant modifications.

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Fall Registration Information Session

This event was a panel for BME students who were unsure what courses to register for during the spring semester. The panel featured upperclassmen representatives across all the focus areas and gave sophomores a chance to ask about specific classes they are interested in. Several faculty members also attended to give insights into the

curriculum changes for the first-year students.

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Alumni Reception

This event was held in direct collaboration with the BME department and the Johns Hopkins Alumni Office. It was an opportunity for undergraduate BME students to network with BME alumni over food and showcase ongoing research and design projects.

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Mentoring Wrap-up Meeting

This event was the final mentoring meeting discussing mentoring content and preparing mentors for next year. All the resources and talking points for each month were finalized. The official mentoring timeline and expectations were also created.

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