Starting life at Dartmouth can be an exciting but overwhelming experience for many freshmen women. That's part of the reasoning behind the formation of Link Up, a new mentoring program to help freshmen women adjust to college life by pairing them with senior women mentors.
"It's like building a community of friends," said Frances Vernon '10, one of the founders of Link Up. "It's a new safe space for women to come to, ask for advice, share stories."
While some mentoring programs for women already exist through groups such as the Women in Business Club, Victoria Maceira '09, a member of the group, thinks that Link Up provides a much needed service on campus.
"I think Link Up is different from other women's groups on campus because its intention is purely to foster interaction amongst women on this campus -- we really don't have any other agenda and are not affiliated with any sort of academically or professionally-related goals," Maceira said in a BlitzMail message from Spain.
Vernon was approached to head up the program by Skye Zeller '07 and Alyssa Scott '07 during Winter term last year. Zeller, Vernon and Scott wanted to revive and reconfigure the previous women's mentoring program, Older and Wiser, which ended in the 2004-2005 school year when the '05 women graduated and there was no one left to run the program.
"The old program just wasn't sustainable," Vernon said. "Which is why we added in the '09 and '10 committees."
One of the reasons that Older and Wiser died out was that it had no link between the freshman women being mentored and seniors who were running the program. New seniors were involved each year. One of the main components of Link Up is the addition of sophomore and junior students running the organization. Vernon, Scott and Zeller presented their proposal for a new mentoring program to Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia, who helped them figure out the best way to structure their proposal.
The College's first mentoring program started shortly after women were first admitted to Dartmouth because there were so few women on campus.
Mentors were dispersed in residence halls all across campus, Sateia said. It assumed that the program was no longer needed once the number of women on campus had increased, but in the late 1980s, Kim Lewis '90 worked to restart it.
"[Lewis] wanted to give them a lot of advice about the decisions they were making in social settings," Sateia said
The program ended in 2005 when enthusiasm waned, though the administrators who had supported the program made it clear they would be happy to restart it if interest should return. Vernon, Zeller and Scott decided to renovate the program.
Women in the Class of 2011 seem excited about the prospect of gaining senior women's advice.
"Knowing I can go to an upperclass woman makes that whole step of moving away from home easier," Sarah Harris '11 said.
Katie Karas '10 said that a mentoring program would have been a useful tool while she acclimated to the College her freshman year. She added that most of the other freshmen she knew who were friends with upperclassmen generally belonged to sports teams.
"It's hard to know how to get involved in activities and use campus resources when you first arrive here," Karas said.
"I didn't know anyone before I got here and that made it difficult."
While no similar group currently exists for male freshmen, Sateia said she would support such a group in the future.
"If the men wanted such a program, I'm certainly willing to support them putting it together," Sateia said. "Right now, the women are very interested and they have it all organized."
Over the summer the program was given a new advisor in Xenia Markowitt, director of the Center for Women and Gender.
"It's going to improve opportunities for cross-class interactions and dialogues and create more of a community of women at Dartmouth," Markowitt said. "Any time you create an opportunity for dialogue and getting to know each other it's inevitable that people are going to have an improved group of friends."
As a freshman woman who has recently arrived on campus, Harris is very impressed by the program's student-initiated aspect.
"[Vernon, Zeller and Scott's initiative] reaffirms my choice to come here," Harris said. "I love that here everyone's friendly and helpful to underclassmen."
While everyone might be friendly, Vernon believes that it can still be difficult to find one's "comfort zone" as a freshman.
"I think bridging that gap [between freshmen and upperclassmen] is going to be tremendous and can help with a lot of different issues on campus that we hear talked about," Vernon said. "
Vernon sees the program as an opportunity for freshmen women to quickly become involved in a community. For senior women, she says, it's an opportunity to share their experiences.
"I was very excited because inevitably every spring there are senior women who come to me saying they want to talk to women who are just arriving here so that they'll have an easier time," Markowitt said. "As seniors realize they're leaving, they want to leave a legacy."
