On Friday, Oct 20th, CEIBS 2006 Mentoring Program was officially kicked off. The opening ceremony was held at the Student Center at CEIBS on Friday evening. About 40 mentors, consisting of 2006 EMBA students and MBA alumni, and over 100 MBA students from 2006 class participated in the ceremony.
Professor Lydia Price, Associate Dean and MBA Academic Director, and Professor Liang Neng, Associate Dean and EMBA Director, delivered their keynote speeches and congratulated the start of the 2006 Mentoring Program. All mentors received certificates of appreciation for mentoring, and were introduced to their mentee MBA students.
Following the open ceremony, a kick-off party was held, and all mentors and their students formed small groups to compete with each other over how fast the mentors and students could get to know each other well. The party ended with an exciting game in which one mentor from each group had to feed a student from the same group with a bottle of beer, which symbolized the transfer of knowledge and experience from the mentors to the students.
The mentoring program provides a good opportunity to MBA students for building contacts and experience beyond their academic studies. Communication and networking are very important to MBA students in terms of career development and social connections.
This year, the mentors' pool extends to those MBA alumni with profound professional experience. Since mentors all have good knowledge and experience from the real business world, they can help MBA student to establish such communication channels and share their experiences with the students. Both mentors and mentees benefit from the program when they exchange information and share experiences with each other.
The Mentoring Program was organized by the MBA office, and the preparation for this year's program took over a month. Mentees and mentors went through a selection and matching process, and the matched list was finalized before the opening ceremony. The program will continue until the 2006 MBA class graduation, therefore mentors and students will spend over one year together to maximize the benefit of the program.
