The Women’s Mentoring Network was established to foster interactions between Duke undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumnae. Through campus-wide events, freshman dorm discussions, faculty dinners, and a mentoring database, the Women’s Mentoring Network hopes to build a strong community of women across and beyond the Duke campus.
The Women’s Mentoring Network is structured into four committees. Dorm Discussions is responsible for coordinating two casual seminar events in each freshman dorm every semester. Faculty Dinners arranges intimate dinner gatherings for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty based on majors and fields of interest. Social Enrichment plans speakers, mixers, and other large-scale social events for the Duke community. Advertising increases campus awareness of the Women’s Mentoring Network through a variety of creative strategies.
After the release of the Campus Culture Initiative in spring 2007, a number of undergraduate women expressed increased concern about the issues facing women at Duke. Though the Women’s Initiative had revealed a disempowering social environment for Duke women in 2003, no programs to combat these issues were implemented. Numerous discussions among several undergraduate groups were initiated in order to brainstorm how to make the campus more conducive to providing a comfortable atmosphere for Duke women to interact and form meaningful relationships. These different groups independently concluded that Duke urgently needed a mentoring program.
Three of these groups—Duke Student Government, the Baldwin Scholars program, and Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority—developed individual visions for a mentoring program before collaborating upon a final program design. Following a series of independent committee discussions, a representative from each of these groups met to discuss program implementation in the summer of 2007.
After gaining support from university administrators, the Women’s
Mentoring Network launched its pilot program at the beginning of
the fall 2007 semester. Despite little advertising efforts, the
program soon contained over 100 members. Today, the Women’s
Mentoring Network contains almost 300 members, making it one of
the largest student groups at Duke.
The primary goals of the Women’s Mentoring Network include:
• Providing opportunities for discussion and mentoring among a diverse array of Duke women coming from a variety of different racial, geographical, ethnic, and age groups
• Encouraging comfortable environments for faculty and students to interact and discuss numerous issues including campus culture, future ambitions, academics, and healthy living
• Forming meaningful connections between freshmen students and upperclassmen and providing freshman women with positive role models who they can come to for advice on a number of issues
• Providing a program to Duke women that has a longevity not present in the FAC program
• Facilitating a social association of women dedicated to improving campus culture and interested in interacting with other Duke women
• Establishing a network of support for Duke women throughout their undergraduate careers and beyond
• Keeping female alumnae informed about the mentoring network and women’s lives at Duke