Mentorship.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Mentor was the sagacious adviser to the young Telemachus, son of Odysseus. Nearly three millennia later, the name lives—thrives—at Drew, where mentorship is ingrained in the campus culture. This issue is formed around the theme of mentorship: former students on the merits of Drew’s extraordinary faculty, a look at our Nobel Prize winner who spent two decades mentoring undergraduates and alumni who pay it forward as mentors.

President MaryAnn Baenninger emphasized mentorship in her inauguration speech. “The relationships between students and faculty, which start out classically around some academic subject matter, quickly turn into a relationship between mentor and mentee, researcher and apprentice, counselor and discerner,” Baenninger said. “Drew students seek out and sustain experiences that provide practical or professional learning as a matter of course, and their professors are the catalysts and the matchmakers between student and experience.”

We think this is precisely what Homer had in mind.

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