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Outreach and Events

Mentor Magic

The Peer Tutor and Mentor Summit, an annual event held near Halloween for peers and tutors to collaborate and learn from each other,  was held last Friday in Cortelyou Commons. The theme of this years’ summit was mentor magic, and attendees were invited to tweet throughout their day with the tag #mentormagic. We started promptly at 10am with our own Outreach coordinator Jen Finstrom and UCWbL director Lauri Dietz!

Keynote speaker Joyana Jacoby followed Jen and Lauri, grounding the work we do as tutors and mentors in the  Vincentian value of service. As always, there were multiple round robins to choose from. Round robins are brief discussions, presentations, or activities led by Summit participants. Attendees were able to do four in the morning and four in the afternoon. The first I went to was “Best Communication Practices for Providing Support and Resources to Students.”

While many of the participants at the summit are UCWbLers, it was great to hear from people from different programs across DePaul. Kayla and Marisa, pictured above, were from the Office of Multicultural Student Success (OMSS). They led a discussion on how to use anti-deficit language in interactions with students.

Our own Nat G.’s Round Robin was similarly focused on the language we use to interact with writers.

She focused on pronouns—ensuring that both the writer and tutor are being referred to by their preferred pronouns. The main thing we talked about was how to open up this discussion with writers or mentees in both a caring and unintrusive way.

I also had the pleasure of running into an UCWbLer-dominated table.

Kate D., Sarah T., and Trisha M.’s Round Robin focused on conjuring community collaboration, something these three have been working hard at with the UCWbL10 quests.

I know I enjoyed hearing from peers within and outside of the UCWbL . Equally important, the lunch served was the best that Chartwell’s has to offer—veggie and chicken fajitas. Of course, that was the doing of our very own Katie Brown 🙌

What round robins stuck with you? Were you inspired to lead one on your own, or perhaps started thinking about what sort of content you didn’t see here that might be inservice-worthy? Share in the comments 🙂

Also, check out the Summit program here for a full list of the Round Robins offered: ptmsummit2016fullprogram