The Pathfinders: Mentors help students find their way

Stephanie Mattingly couldn’t help being a little nervous. It was January 2003, and the University of Louisville junior was on the way to her first meeting with Merrily Orsini, the businesswoman selected to be her mentor.

Orsini, president of My Virtual Corp., a Louisville business services company, had founded a string of successful companies and was an accomplished career woman by anyone’s measure. A delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business in 1995, she was named Kentucky Woman Business Owner of the Year and Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year the following year.

Mattingly, a marketing major, had studied business and discussed it in the classroom but never worked in a real business job.

“I was scared,” Mattingly says. “I didn’t know how things were going to go.”

Orsini ushered Mattingly into her Hurstbourne Lane office and the two began chatting.

“I explained that my goal was to get comfortable with the business setting and I asked if she could help me with that,” Mattingly recalls.

U of L honors student Stephanie Mattingly (right) along with mentor Merilly Orsini, president of My Virtual Corp. The tow were paired through the Overseers Professional Mentoring Program.

Mattingly is one of 50 students paired individually with community leaders and other professionals in the Louisville area through the U of L Board of Overseers Professional Mentoring Program. The board is made up of community leaders who advise and support the university.

The mentoring program encourages students to explore a career by developing a close relationship with someone experienced in the field.

Today, a little more than a year after that first meeting with Orsini, Mattingly’s outlook has changed completely, she says. Besides carrying a full-time class load in U of L’s College of Business and Public Administration, the senior is working 24 hours a week as a consumer financial solutions representative at General Electric’s administrative offices on Shelbyville Road .

In that position, she has “done a little bit of everything the company does,” from helping coordinate delivery logistics to handling the billing accounts for West Coast hotels and motels buying appliances.

Orsini prepared her for the interview that landed her the job at GE, right down to the details of how to handle tough questions, how to make eye contact and how to shake hands with pizazz.

“She has helped me so much,” Mattingly says. “I’m definitely more relaxed and confident about myself. I’ve learned that I can live up to the standards of the business world and at times maybe even exceed them.”

U of L juniors who have a grade point average of 3.35 or higher are invited to apply to become “mentees.” Each student who is accepted into the program is asked to identify a primary career interest. Then a Board of Overseers committee works to find a potential mentor.

Literally hundreds of successful mentor-mentee relationships have been initiated through the program since it began in 1987, says Luke Buckman, who in February replaced Ann Slider as its coordinator.

Martha Neal Cooke, a Louisville businesswoman who chairs the committee that matches students with mentors, thinks the program’s biggest strength is helping students discover themselves.

“It’s all about exploration. It’s about finding out if what you think you want to do will work for you,” Cooke says. ”Students who become mentees are required to initiate contact with their mentors and set the agenda for the relationship, which is a valuable lesson in itself.”

Stewart Cobb, a long-time U of L overseer and former committee chair, says the program works because it exposes students to the real world.

“A lot of honors students have never had a job, so they aren’t savvy about the workplace. They can benefit tremendously by having real-life mentors who show them the ropes,” Cobb says. “We explain to our mentors: ‘You don’t need to know how to do this. Your student will lead you. They’ll tell you exactly what they need.’ ”

Recruiting committed professionals as mentors is a key element of the program’s success. Cobb is amazed by the number of busy people who will take on the role despite many other pressing responsibilities.

He recalls trying to find a mentor for a student who was eagerly interested in sports management, but “I wasn’t sure exactly who I could find to step into that role.”

Cobb called around for several days and then had a brainstorm. He put in a call to U of L Athletic Director Tom Jurich.

“Within a few hours, Tom got back to me saying he’d be delighted to be a mentor,” Cobb says. “And if he isn’t a busy person, I don’t know who is.”

In another case, U of L junior Meghan Bell asked for a mentor in clinical psychiatry. She ultimately was paired with Barbara Weakley-Jones, a forensic pathologist who serves as a medical examiner and teaches in the university’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

“You can’t go in the room with a psychiatrist while he or she counsels patients because of confidentiality, so that type of mentoring experience didn’t work out for me,” Bell says.

Things have turned out fine, though, she reports.

“I’ve learned a lot from mentoring with Barbara. I’ve spent time in the morgue and she’s let me help out down there. I’ve seen autopsies performed, and I’ve even weighed organs. It’s been very interesting and educational.”

Sometimes mentoring can show a student that the career he thought was perfect isn’t right for him at all.

U of L cancer researcher Kelly McMasters, who holds the Samuel D. and Lolita S. Weakley Endowed Chair in Surgical Oncology, has mentored several students from high school to college age over the years. It’s important for students to find out as much as they can about the realities of a career before they take the plunge, he says.

“Most young people make career choices on limited information. Unless they get experience outside the classroom it’s hard for them to imagine what a career will actually be like.”

McMasters sets clear expectations of success for his mentees and carefully monitors their progress. He requires them to conduct an independent project, write or contribute significantly to writing a manuscript, and present their work in a medical school research competition.

“I have rarely been disappointed,” he says.

Vinicius Souza, a U of L biology and economics major from Rio de Janeiro and McMaster’s current mentee, acknowledges that his mentoring experience has helped him grow.

“I’ve gone into surgery with him, and he’s let me see just about everything he does,” Souza says.

“I’ve wanted to go into medicine since I was 10, but I didn’t know exactly what type. Now I’m pretty sure I want to receive an M.D.-Ph.D. degree and split my time between clinical practice and research.”

In many cases, mentees aren’t the only ones who benefit from the mentoring program.

Orsini, the Louisville businesswoman who is mentoring Mattingly, says Mattingly brought about significant changes in her company, helping redesign a Web site and conducting market research that eventually led to a change in the business’s name.

“I’m not sure Stephanie gives herself enough credit,” Orsini says. “She came to me with an unbiased and totally fresh approach and excellent instincts. She asked lots of questions. She gave me wonderful insights. She probably doesn’t realize how much of an impact she’s had.

“I have no doubt that once she is established in her career, she’ll give back.”

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