By Amaechi Agbo

A university don, Prof Nkiru Kizor-Akaraiwe has advocated for the inclusion of mentoring among higher education curriculum.

Prof Kizor-Akaraiwe made the call in Enugu on Monday while delivering a lecture at the Faculty of Clinical Machine, Enugu State University of Science and Technology, ESUT College of Medicine, ESUCOM.

Prof Kizor-Akaraiwe who guested as the second speaker during the lecture held at the College Auditorium, emphasised that inclusion of mentoring in the students’ curriculum will help forester mentor-mentee relationship, promote students’ career growth and development.

Speaking on the sub-topic. Mentorship in an Academic Environment: Challenges and Prospects, Dr Kizor-Akaraiwe, who is a Professor of Ophthalmology, said mentoring in higher institutions should be considered a serious course and called on the university management to consider its inclusion in the curriculum.

“Mentoring or mentorship is a relationship, mutual, between a junior and a superior. As a lecturer, our duties do not end in going to the classrooms to teach, it is important that we have a closer relationship with the students such that we can help them to grow. We need to help them avoid the pitfalls we fell into and encourage them in their career progression. At my level in academic, I have mentors, people I look up to and I think it is important that the management should consider including mentoring in the educational curriculum. 

“At secondary schools, we used to have Guidance and Counselling which helped a lot of us but today, how many of the schools have such provisions?” she said.

Also delivering his lecture, the Senior Special Assistant to the Enugu State Governor on health, Dr Yomi Jaye, said that mentorship cuts across all human sectors adding that it is a process where younger ones learn from their superiors.

Dr Jaye however noted that mentorship does not have class nor boundary adding that students can also mentor their lecturers.

“For instance, we live in a world driven by technological innovations and the young age are the ones who have greater access to the machines. A student who is good in using the internet to create things such as A1, can also mentor a lecturer who is far older than him in that regard.

“Mentors impact on your life, they lead you through the path and help you to get to the top. They don’t look for you, you rather look for them. If you don’t have a mentor, you are like an orphan suffering alone,” he said.

Declaring the workshop opened, the Vice-Chancellor, ESUT, Professor Aloysius-Michaels Okolie who spoke through the Registrar, Mr Ambrose Ugwu, noted that the university considered the workshop very critical in fostering a healthy relationship in career growth adding that without mentoring, professions such as medicine, law, journalism and the rest, will be at risk.

In an interview, the Dean Faculty of Clinical Medicine, Prof Umezuruike Okafor said the workshop lived up to its expectations and thanked the Vice-Chancellor, the university management and the ESUCOM Board for support.

He noted that the workshop will be a yearly activity in order to bring its importance to bear in the minds of the students and academic curriculum planners.

“I am excited, it is a kind of prayer answered, I must tell you that when this idea came, we were wary of the attendance, because we know what we will be having, but thank God it didn’t just the drew attendance from the college, you can notice even outside the college people attended, am very excited and happy with what happened today. The workshop will be a year activity, it will be sustained because we have all seeing the need for mentoring to be considered a course in the university,” he said.