Senior business management major Karli Timberlake and her mentor, Dennette Miramontes, grab coffee during their weekly meeting. Photo credit: Gina Ender
Azusa Pacific puts a strong emphasis on its mentoring program, seeking deeper relationships and spiritual guidance for students. The 25-year-old effort partners undergraduate students with faculty, staff members or seniors who seek faith-driven, interpersonal relationships.
“Freshmen go through so many life changes,” senior business management major Karli Timberlake said. “To have one consistent person every single week that they know they can come to and talk to about any of their problems [is the best part of having a mentor].”
Timberlake said having a source of social and spiritual consistency on a weekly basis from someone older and wiser is the most common purpose of pursuing mentorship. Timberlake meets weekly with Senior Director of Development and Estate Planning Dennette Miramontes.
Miramontes values her ability to share past struggles and victories with students in hopes of giving them insight and to help shape their futures.
“You have the opportunity to be really transparent and share your struggles very intimately and privately,” Miramontes said.
Timberlake said having a mentor allows her to be challenged in ways she wouldn’t be by her peers.
Through the Campus Pastors’ Office and Office of Discipleship Ministries, compatible mentors are carefully assigned to students. People with similar backgrounds, passions and personalities are matched to appropriately meet the needs of the student in search of mentoring.
“Our goal is to help people follow Jesus together,” Spiritual Mentoring Coordinator Jeanine Smith said.
Smith evaluates the crucial aspect of students’ values and goals to match them with a mentor who will meet their needs through prayer and conversational insight.
Miramontes said her student matches have been successful so far.
“I pray and ask God to bring the right student to me, and every year it’s a divine connection,” Miramontes said.
Miramontes said she is still in touch with every APU student she has mentored in the past 20 years.
Smith said that 440 students applied for formal mentorship through Discipleship Ministries this year and about 350 students were matched with a mentor; however, many more students have not yet taken the opportunity to engage themselves in being mentored.
Miramontes said it often seems that mentors fear they are “too busy or that they don’t have anything to give” within a mentoring relationship, but there is “always a way God can use [their] experience and love for him to help others.”
Timberlake became a senior mentor last year. By being both a mentor and mentee, Timberlake said she is more confident and is able to take what she has learned from Miramontes to share new insights with her mentee.
By committing to a mentoring relationship, Smith said students and mentors are able to “grow in faith in partnership with other people.”
For more information about how to sign up for mentorship, visit http://www.apu.edu/campuspastors/programs/mentoring/.