With the end of semester 2 rapidly approaching, the In2science team hosted our second mentor professional development workshop for the year. We love offering free workshops on a variety of topics to give back to our hard-working volunteers. This time, we headed to RMIT’s impressive Storey Hall and enjoyed the sweeping views of the CBD (albeit on a rather gloomy day). We were lucky to host two guest speakers from Teach for Australia, a proud partner of In2science. Senior Recruitment Manager Costa Constantaras and colleague Varun Asthana delivered a humorous and insightful presentation all about relationship building.
While mentoring, our volunteers foster relationships with a diverse range of people – from their host teachers, to the In2science team, to their high school student mentees. In their future careers in STEM they may need to connect with lecturers, research heads, supervisors, managers, and colleagues. Recognising what each different relationship needs can be tricky and requires specific skills. Costa led the attendees through a discussion of relationship-building skills like showing respect, practising empathy and being open-minded. Our mentors were encouraged to put their skills into practice by learning about each other through meaningful conversations and active listening.
Our attendees learnt a lot from the workshop and appreciated the opportunity to ask questions about the relationships they are cultivating with their mentees. It was great to see the mentors sharing their own experiences and helping each other to problem solve. In2science would like to thank Teach for Australia for helping us to organise this workshop, and we look forward to bringing more professional development events to our mentors next year.
