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A Little Help from Our Friends

UNC Asheville Mentorship Programs

By UNC Asheville

April 4^th, 2022

A lot of learning happens at UNC Asheville outside the classroom walls, and even off the University campus.

As students begin to imagine and work toward their future careers, mentors in the Asheville community can help them engage with networking, learn from life experience, and even make meaningful friendships. With expert alumni mentors during Alumni Mentor Week, industry professionals connected through the Department of Management and Accountancy, Athletics supporters with years of experience across fields, and the partnership of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce.

Alumni Mentor Week

Some of those mentors are very close to home, with the UNC Asheville Alumni Mentor Week connecting current students with alumni to make connections and get a no pressure introduction to networking. Alumni Mentor Week 2022 actually runs for two weeks, April 4-15, 2022, giving busy students and alumni plenty of time to fit meetings in their schedule.

Katie Rozycki, who graduated from UNC Asheville’s Mass Communication Department in 2007, served as an alumni mentor in 2021 to a current mass communication student, Jemima Malote.

“Jemima and I met because of her involvement in mass communication, her involvement on the Blue Banner, and her interest in where she wanted to maximize her time over the remainder of her college career,” Rozycki said. “Jemima came to the table—and I think all this is representative of the entire group—with some very focused questions about internships, and about making herself distinguishable and noticed early in her career.”

For Rozycki, who is now vice president of marketing for Graham-Pelton, a philanthropic fundraising service, participating in Alumni Mentor Week was a way to contribute meaningfully to her alma mater.

“The alumni relationship with the University should be a multifaceted one,” Rozycki said. “I think that many alumni look at fundraising as a huge mechanism for how alumni can support the University. And while that is the case, we always want to be called back to the reason why we do it, and that is the direct relationships that you have with people who are in the shoes you were once in—granted, a lot cooler shoes than you were wearing 20 years ago.”

Rozycki and Malote met several times virtually throughout the week, as well as attended focused virtual lectures hosted by the Career Center. Together they discussed the pressures of being student, Rozycki offered guidance on the early stages of one’s career, and Malote shared her passions and interests.

“Marian Wright Edelman said, ‘you can’t be what you can’t see,’” Rozycki said. “I think that alumni, by virtue of generally having more years on earth, have seen more. And so it's important for us to show them what they can be. Jemima was asking, who all can I be, what all can I be? And I was able to help her see some of that.”

Outside Experts

Getting perspectives from members of the community beyond the University is valuable for students, as well. Two UNC Asheville programs, the Department of Management and Accountancy Mentorship Program, and the Athletics Department’s Leaders for Leaders program, match students with experts in their fields in the Asheville and WNC community.

“The Leaders for Leaders program started about 10 years ago with a partnership with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and The Cliffs residential community,” said Rebecca Nelms, assistant athletics director for student-athlete success. The program pairs student-athletes with local retirees, who offer their mentees career guidance and life advice.

“Sometimes they’re very career focused, and sometimes the matches have been learning how to play the piano, or going on hikes,” Nelms said.

Courtney O’Malley, a soccer player who graduated in December 2021, joined the Leaders for Leaders program as a sophomore. “I knew there was the potential to just have someone in the community there to support you,” O’Malley said. “Just someone to come to your games, or be a friend, and that was really exciting to me as an out-of-state student.”

O’Malley and her mentor, Molly Nichols, are now working together to help streamline the mentor/mentee matchmaking process and increase awareness of the Leaders for Leaders program among student-athletes. O’Malley hopes to help more people enjoy the kind of relationship she’s had with Nichols.

Courtney O'Malley in her graduation gown with her mentor, Molly Nichols.

“She not only cares about me, she cares about my teammates, too,” O’Malley said. “When she comes to the game, she has other people to support. It's not just like a two-person relationship. It's a community.”

Paying it Forward

The Department of Management and Accountancy’s mentorship program was inspired partly by the success of the Leaders for Leaders program. Juniors and seniors majoring in management and accountancy are matched up with mentors from the department’s advisory board, which is made up of local entrepreneurs and business leaders.

“Part of our students’ professional education through this program is that they're learning how to be mentored, and how to establish a relationship with the mentor, and how to pick a mentor,” said UNC Asheville faculty Susan Clark, associate professor of management. “Part of the process is, how do you reach out to a professional? How do you follow up with them? How do you start a conversation? How do you ask for what you need? How do you communicate your goals effectively?”

Those skills can be crucial to a young person’s career, Clark said. “Approximately 80 percent of entry level professional jobs are accessed through who you know,” she explained. Mentors can be an excellent connection for students learning to network professionally.

Accounting alumnus Jonathon Beck ’20 partnered with Bill Schulz, chair of the advisory board and a retired executive. “I don’t know how many times he helped me revise my resume or practiced interviewing with me,” said Beck, who now works with Deloitte, where he runs internal control assessments for federal agencies.

Their mentorship relationship has continued past Beck’s graduation, as well. “This is my first time in a corporate environment, and now I’m bouncing ideas off of him, like, ‘how would you handle a situation like this? Did you ever run into anything like this?’” Beck said. “We’ve become really good friends, we’ll go to lunch or baseball games together.”

“We’re at a time in our career, where we want to help people and have young people in our lives,” said Schulz.

“That keeps us maybe a little bit young. And if we can give some advice, and if I can help somebody to not make some of the mistakes that I made, it's wonderful.”

“I wish I would have had someone coaching me on developing a professional identity, establishing a network, and getting myself out there to find internships when I was an undergraduate and I didn't get that,” Clark said. “There's all this psychology that we are actually happier and more joyful if we do things that aren't just for money or just to promote ourselves. When we pay it forward and when we give back, it makes us happier. I think you see that authentic joy that comes out of paying it forward with our mentees.”

NEXT AVL

For students specifically hoping to build their future careers in Asheville, the Asheville Chamber of Commerce offers NEXT AVL, a nine-month professional mentorship program that pairs local university students, including UNC Asheville students, with working professionals.

Applied mathematics and computer science double major Chris Sabb partnered with Lacy Cross, a senior commercial banker. When their mentorship started, Sabb was studying accounting, management and economics, but their relationship has continued, and continued to be valuable, even though Sabb has changed his course of study.

“Every mentorship is different, but with me and Lacy we meet every couple of weeks and talk about resume building, and he sets me up with meetings with software developers,” said Sabb, who is also interning as a software developer with UNC Asheville’s NEMAC.

Though Sabb is still a sophomore, he’s already thinking ahead to his planned career in machine learning and cybersecurity—a career he would like to explore in Asheville.

“I really like Asheville, so I want to set myself up for success here,” Sabb said.

His professional relationship with Cross will aid him in establishing the network he’ll need in the future.

Accounting student Erin Robey already has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, and signed up for NEXT AVL as a way to help her make the transition from the academic science community to the business community.

“Science was always my background, so I’m used to science academia, and that’s the approach that I have to everything when it comes to networking. It’s different than the business world,” said Robey, who plans to become a certified public accountant. Her mentor, CPA Andrea Owenby, has helped Robey with everything from crafting professional emails to deciding which electives to take in graduate school.

Besides the individual mentorship relationships, students in NEXT AVL participate in a number of events and activities as a cohort, including monthly networking meetings, job shadows, and assignments like drafting a resume and crafting a three-minute pitch.

“It’s almost like a TED Talk,” Robey explained. “You get up in business clothes and pitch yourself to people who are associated with the Chamber who show up from the community to see the candidates from this program. From what I understand, a lot of times this will lead to a job or an internship.”

It’s a big opportunity, and one of the many opportunities in her future that Robey knows her mentor will help her prepare for.

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