ENGAGE Reverse Mentoring Programme (Pilot) Officially Launches at UCC

2 Sep 2024

The ENGAGE Reverse Mentoring in Higher Education pilot programme officially launched on the 2^nd of September with an inaugural training event held in the Dora Allman Room in UCC. The programme, which aims to foster knowledge sharing and an exchange of perspectives between junior and senior staff in higher education institutions, is off to an impressive start with 12 mentors and 12 mentees participating across four higher education institutions in Ireland.

The ENGAGE Reverse Mentoring programme is funded by the HEA Gender Equality Enhancement Fund and is designed to explore and contest the gendered barriers faced by women staff in higher education. The scheme is an original gender equality initiative that flips the traditional power dynamics by pairing women academic, research, and professional staff as mentors to senior leaders in HEIs, as mentees. The objective is for early career women mentors to learn and exercise leadership skills, enhance their roles, their contribution to their teams and/or institutions, as well as benefitting from mutual learning with their mentees.

At the launch event, Mary Horgan and Marnina Winkler delivered an engaging training session, focussed on establishing goals, expectations and techniques of reflective practice for both mentors and mentees. The mentors and mentees met for the first time at this in-person event to lay the groundwork for a two-way reciprocal learning process and partnership approach. One mentor said, “I am delighted to be part of such an innovative opportunity”.

The ENGAGE Reverse Mentoring project team were pleased to welcome partners from University of Limerick, University of Galway and Munster Technological University. The partners have had five meetings since the start of the project. The programme is targeted engagement for the universities, allowing the partners to tap into the mentoring knowledge that already exists within the university communities.

As the ENGAGE Reverse Mentoring Pilot Programme kicks off, the pairs will have four one-to-one meetings, learning from each other and sharing their own insights, before the programme ends in January 2025.

UCC ENGAGE Reverse Mentoring project team: Prof Ciara Heavin, Prof Nuala Finnegan, Dr Claire Murray, Dr Avril Hutch, Dr Tanya Watson in collaboration with Dr Anne Gannon, Mary Horgan, and Aileen Waterman, and Munster Technological University (Siobhan Kangataran), University of Limerick (Marie Connolly), and University of Galway (Helen Maher).

Acknowledgement: The HEA Gender Equality Enhancement Fund.