Mentoring Health Educator Success

Given instructional demands, faculty have few opportunities to help students develop interpersonal skills linked to personal and professional development. While many report employment histories, few undergraduates have professional experience. Yet today's health education students are expected to advocate for their profession, their issues and themselves. To be effectively executed, such advocacy entails professional and personal competence. Drawing from the Health Belief Model and Social Cognitive Theory, an intervention was designed to engage community health practitioners with students to advance students' personal development and professional persuasiveness. Following the speed dating model, a panel of 10 diverse community health practitioners was convened. Students (N=25), all senior/community health interns, rotated among four panel members. In each rotation, they offered personal ‘elevator speeches' and were interviewed. Practitioners then debriefed students on their performance. Preliminary analyses confirm students' lack of professional exposure and concern about that deficit, stressing an absence of ‘real world' in academic preparation. The intervention increased students' confidence in their presentation of self, alerting them to areas for continued development. Community health practitioners, in turn, reported new insight into and willingness to guide students' professional growth. Exposure to multiple interview styles/questions appears to educate and empower students. For health educators to participate effectively in policy affairs, as well as to be effective advocates for the profession, content is not enough. Students' professional success will be determined as well by their ability to present themselves as effective professionals. Ways to mentor this facet of student development merit our attention.