Role models, Reciprocity and Respect: Mentors’ insights on creating and sustaining productive mentoring relationships in higher education settings

This presentation will focus on how mentoring relationships were productively created and sustained within the AIME program by deeply exploring the reflections of the mentors themselves. While literature and research has previously defined the nature and structure of mentoring programs, very little of this focuses on what mentors regarded as positively contributing to best practice in this field. The paper draws on in-depth interviews conducted with 74 mentors, of these 74, 7 are Indigenous young people who are graduates of the AIME program. The purpose of this session is to foreground what individuals perceived as being innovative about AIME mentoring – what made this program different. This is particularly pertinent as many of our interviewees had been involved in other programs and so drew productive comparisons between these experiences and their involvement with AIME. Based on this data, we will present a series of best practice guidelines that can inform future mentoring initiatives, particularly those involving Indigenous young people and university students.