That is the argument that University of St. Thomas faculty mentoring consultant Buffy Smith made during a recent talk about helping low-income, minority and first-generation college students adjust to the cultural shifts that await them in the world of higher education.
“When we look at mentoring and how it’s done on most campuses, we find that we do a very good job at advising,” said Smith, author of “Mentoring At-Risk Students through the Hidden Curriculum of Higher Education.”
“But if we really want to have students have equal access to the curriculum, we have to move beyond advising,” Smith said. “Advising is important, but it’s not enough.”
Instead of merely advising students—or even advocating on their behalf by reaching out to their instructors to see what the students could be doing to achieve better results—Smith prescribes a form of mentoring known as “apprenticeship.”
It involves “empowering (students) by showing them how to do things for themselves.” Smith said the apprenticeship approach is crucial when it comes to interacting with faculty, building social capital on campus, and helping students master the “hidden curriculum,” which she defined as the “unwritten, often unspoken norms, values, expectations, behaviors, codes of conduct” that are “not transparent or accessible to all students.”
“How do we help students master that? They need mentors. They need mentors who will serve as code translators of the university culture,” Smith said. “These mentors are critical for the overall academic achievement of students.”
