Our Mentor Program links our healthcare graduate students with Suffolk University alumni and other professionals who are working in the healthcare field. Graduate students in their last semester who are healthcare professionals can be mentors, too.

Mentors serve as a sounding board and source of information and guidance for students during the early part of their graduate studies.

The specific benefits of the Mentor Program include:

• Through one-on-one relationships with mentors, students can integrate what they learn through course work with what they learn of workplace practices from their mentors' experiences, knowledge, insights, and know-how.
• Students can pose questions and share perspectives in a friendly, supportive forum.
• Students can receive guidance on defining career objectives and making wise career choices.
• International students who aren't familiar with the US healthcare system get to learn about it from an insider perspective.
• Mentors can stay abreast of changes in aparts of the fast-evolving healthcare field through their interactions with students who are immersed in studying those changes.

Mentors and students are linked according to areas of shared interest and expertise, so that, for example, a student who is particularly interested in hospital administration is matched with a mentor who is a hospital administrator.

The Mentor Program guidance handbook offers ideas for mentor-student relationships and activities and helps mentors and students pursue the program's objectives.

From the kick-off of each cycle of the Mentor Program in early October to the conclusion in late April, mentor-student pairs are encouraged to meet in person at least once a month, and to keep in touch by telephone, email and text-messaging, as appropriate and desirable.

Mentors and students report that mentoring is both beneficial and highly enjoyable. In many instances, the relationships that are developed endure long after the mentoring formally ends.

Organizations from which our Mentors have been drawn

• Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• Boston Medical Center
• Brigham and Women’s Hospital
• Brookline Public Health Department
• Career Staff Limited, a Division of Sun healthcare Group, Inc.
• Caritas Christi Healthcare
• Caritas Norwood Hospital
• Center for Health Innovation, Noblis
• Children's Hospital Boston
• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates
• Dedham Medical Associates
• Lahey Clinic
• Lowell Oral Surgery Associates
• Massachusetts General Hospital
• Massachusetts Hospital Association
• New England Baptist Hospital
• Newton Wellesley Hospital
• North Shore Medical Center
• North Shore Physicians Group
• Outcome Systems
• Partners Healthcare System, Inc.
• Partners Private Care
• Partners Research Management
• Pfizer Pharmaceuticals
• Tufts Medical Center