Student Mentorship Programme

Welcome
Welcome to the pilot project of the Wits Law School Student Mentorship Programme (WLS-SMP). We are proud to announce the launch of a new programme at Wits Law School that seeks to provide selected students with mentoring support as they pursue their studies.

The WLS-SMP is a competitive programme that will identify up to twenty students and pair them with mentors in 2012. The number and configuration of the programme may change in future years.

At the core of the WLS-SMP is a desire to afford highly motivated and deserving students an opportunity to benefit from some individualised attention from a specially selected mentor.

The Need for Establishing the WLS-SMP
Whilst the crisis in South Africa’s education system is widely spoken about and well documented with numerous interventions being proposed and implemented at the pre-tertiary education phase, the plight of students who do make it into university coming from this system generally receives inadequate attention. Part of the reason for this is that most interventions tend to be systemic and pedagogical, addressing themselves mainly at curricula and how it is packaged and delivered. Within the law school environment, the same is arguably true. Far less attention has been given to addressing the individual needs of students who are surely impacted upon negatively by these trends within the South African educational environment. True as it may be that students entering university seem to be worse prepared with each passing year, the intellectual and emotional resources to support them once enrolled in university also tends to be equally lacking.

Even though there are many reasons that explain the inadequate support such as increased student numbers matched by increasing pressure on academic staff functioning in a demanding university environment, these reasons tend to mask one of the worst effects of the South Africa’s educational crisis, namely painting the student as the problem rather than as the victim of the systemic failures. In other words there is tendency to see the failures of the education system predominantly in terms of their social and economic consequences. By over-emphasising the social costs of the system’s failures, there is then a tendency to overlook the human cost of ritually painting new matriculants with the same brush, so to speak, as that used to describe the failing educational system. Such an approach is clearly fraught with danger as it blames the victims and fails to recognise that this new generation of students like all previous generations of students have ambition, goals, dreams, insecurities and fears. It is, thus, against this background that the WLS-SMP is being introduced to as a means to offer support to selected students as they grow and develop in their university careers.

WLS-SMP Aims and Objectives
To establish a formal mentor-mentee relationship in terms of which the mentor shall work with the mentee in order to:

• Provide support for the mentee in her/his academic endeavours;
• Act as a role model for the mentee;
• Counsel and guide the mentee on career related matters;
• Inculcate in the mentee an appreciation of the important values of excellence, social consciousness, professionalism and integrity;

Who is Eligible to Apply?

•  If you are in you second year of your undergraduate LLB or the first year of your postgraduate LLB studies
•  Highly-motivated, hard-working and committed students
•  No marks requirements

Format of the Programme
The programme will be structured in such a way that each student selected for the programme shall be allocated to a mentor. The WLS will be responsible for pairing each student with a suitable mentor. Thereafter, the mentor and the student shall structure their interactions as suits them, although it will be expected that the mentor and student should meet at least twice a quarter over the duration of the academic year (approximately 8 times a year).

How to Apply
Each applicant is required to submit:

1. An application form (download application form here)
2. A recent CV
3. A typed essay of no more than 600 -750 words motivating:

1. Why the applicant should be selected
2. What the applicant’s areas of academic interest are
3. What benefits the applicant hopes to derive; and
4. How the applicant intend to use the knowledge and experience s/he gains from the WLS-SMP

The application should be hand-delivered to:

Ms Cindy Petersen
Wits Law School
Office LB 13

Or emailed to: cindy.petersen@wits.ac.za

The WLS-SMP selection committee reserves the right to call an applicant for an interview should it be necessary.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Extended to Monday 20 February 2012