ESS 804: Connecting to Berkeley through mentorship

Laura Vogt:
Hello, and thank you for listening to our next installment of the Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley engineer. I’m your host, Laura Vogt, the associate director of marketing and communications in the College of Engineering. Now we know that being admitted to Berkeley engineering is a big achievement in and of itself, and now we want to make sure that you’re supported and have the resources to be successful. And one of my favorite resources is the Berkeley Mentorship Cohort, or BMC as we’ll refer to the program today. It’s one of the many programs we have in place to bolster retention and a sense of belonging for every member of our community. I’m happy to introduce Marcia Breslin-Cantillana, Student Engagement Manager and Engineering Student Services, along with student mentors from this past year. Alisson Moreno, Zainab Alyosha, Simon Gonzalez, and Cesar Carvajal. Thank you everyone for being here today. So let’s start with introductions. Marcia, please tell us about yourself and your role in ESS.

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
Hi. Thank you so much for having us. And my name is actually Marcia Breslin-Cantillana and I’m originally from Chile, but I’ve lived here in California for a long time and I am a Student Engagement Manager with Engineering Student Services. And part of what I do is running the Berkeley mentorship cohort.

Laura Vogt:
And so let’s have each of the students go in the order of Alisson, Caesar, Zainab, and then Simon.

Alisson Moreno:
Okay. Hi, my name is Alisson. I’m a rising senior student. I’m studying bioengineering. I’m originally from El Salvador, so that has kind of guided my role in BMC since I’m part of the undocumented engineering family in which my main role is marketing.

Caesar:
I’m Caesar, I’m a recent grad. Just graduated this May in mechanical engineering and I’m from San Diego.

Zainab Alyosha:
Hello, this is Zainab. I’m originally from Saudi Arabia, so I’m an international student. I’m a rising junior and I’m studying [inaudible 00:01:55]. Maybe you’ve never heard of it, but it is a major. And I work as a mentor this past semester and it’s been really great.

Simon Gonzalez:
Hi everyone, I’m Simon. I’m a fourth year mechanical engineering student originally from LA. And my role in BMC is I’m taking a step up from lead mentor to now being more of a coordinator role and helping Marcia run the program.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you again everyone for joining us today. So let’s start with the basics of the Berkeley Mentorship Cohort, again, BMC, could you give us an overview?

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
So the mentorship program pairs incoming students with upper class mentors. So it’s a program based on peer mentoring and the guidance that the mentors offer to incoming students has to do with academic, professional and social challenges that many students will face their first year. And we understand that students come from all walks of life, from all over the world to UC Berkeley and everybody will have different needs. But our mentor cohort is really robust. We have over 110 mentors and they all come from all over the place with many different experiences and also a lot of things in common that they can leverage when helping new students to adjust to the Berkeley pace to understand how classes work. They even have some comments about professors classes that they’ve taken and they can offer a number of different resources, clubs, organizations, what are the best places to study on campus, and then also guide them through closer resources that we have here available at the Engineering Student Services such as the Center for Academic Excellence, the CAE, and where they can find tutoring and deep dive instruction and other resources.

And just to have a familiar face here on campus I think is really valuable when you are new to a place. Even if you’re from the area, even if you’re from the Bay Area, coming to a new institution where you’re going to be meeting different people and where you’re going to find that the tempo, that the pace is different and things work in a different way is very helpful to have a friendly face around who might be, I don’t know, it depends on how they choose to communicate with each other, but it could be a text away. It could be a phone call away or just seeing a friendly face around a study space that they choose to go to. So we have currently eight different families. So we subdivide the big cohort into families, which is smaller cohorts. And we have the prep cohort, which is that cohort really comes from the prep program that starts in the summer.

And because in the summer the students are invited to attend prep, which is a preparation program, we want to expand this in the fall semester and open it up to more students who might also be low income, first generation and/or students of color. And that doesn’t mean that the main prep cohort is going to be interrupted, it just means that we are going to expand the access to different resources in the fall semester for them to continue throughout the year. And they’re paired with prep mentors as well. We have the culture family, which is for students who might be coming from out of states or from students who are international students or students who don’t find another identity that resonates with them and the other cohorts. And we have the Women in Engineering cohort, which is self-explanatory. We want to really empower women in engineering. As probably you all know, women in engineering are still a minority here. So we want to empower them to succeed and to find the resources that they need for that success.

We have the undocumented engineering family, which is what Alisson was mentioning before, that will serve students who are undocumented and we offer a number of different resources. I’m sure Alisson will tell us more about that in a minute. We have the Queer Family cohort, which is meant to serve students who self-identify as queer and also a minority in our college, in our university. So we want to empower them as well. We have the Transfer Student Mentor Program and the students in that family will be paired with transfer students coming from many different California community colleges. And we have in the spring only the Resilience Family cohort, which is a family that serves students who are mostly on academic probation or experiencing academic stressors. And so that’s only in the spring because well everybody’s new so we don’t need it. And then our newest cohort is going to be for students with disabilities and it’s called Disability Justice Family.

Throughout the summer, we’ll be creating a number of different resources to serve them as best as possible in the fall and make sure that we connect them with the correct resources across campus so they can have a successful experience here at Berkeley.

Laura Vogt:
That’s amazing. I really like that you have the families, so you could focus on the individual needs of students as you have them join the program.

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
That’s exactly the idea.

Laura Vogt:
So let’s start with the students and have each of you tell us what exactly your role is with BMC. I know you said it a little bit earlier, but what are some of the resources that you’ve benefited from because of BMC? Alisson, we’ll start with you again.

Alisson Moreno:
Okay. So my main role in BMC, like I said, I’m part of the undocumented engineering family and my main role within that has been marketing. I’m in charge of marketing, anything that has to do with social media and posting and making sure people are aware of our events and all of that. I’m in charge of… I’m kind of transitioning this coming year into helping BMC as a whole with social media and marketing and all of that. But some of the things that I’ve benefited from, especially being an undocumented student myself, I think I’ve found community, which is a little hard to find here in Berkeley. You don’t naturally meet a lot of undocumented students on campus, so it’s been really nice to find people who I can relate to and who I can share experiences with and it’s been really nice for finding community as a whole.

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
And you’re also a mentor.

Alisson Moreno:
And I’m also a mentor, yes, which has been really nice. I used to be a mentee and now I’m a mentor, so it’s been a really full circle thing.

Laura Vogt:
It’s nice that you’re progressing through the program, that you’ve gotten things out of it and you’re moving on to other parts so that you could still be part of it and meet new people and continue on.

Alisson Moreno:
I’m really glad that I received help from the program when I was a freshman and now I’m the one providing that help, so that makes me really happy.

Laura Vogt:
All right, Caesar, let’s hear what is your role and what resources have you benefited from?

Caesar:
Like Alisson, I’ve been full circle. I was part of BMC my freshman year of college, which was unfortunately COVID year 2020, so my mentor did his best that he could through Zoom and I appreciated it as well. That’s what made me continue as a mentor, sophomore, junior and senior year. And I’ve gone through the whole thing as a mentor and I was also a lead mentor my senior year. My role with that was for the culture family, but since I had really small family, I helped around a lot. I helped plan events, I helped with [inaudible 00:10:24] and making sure that our mentees and mentors were getting what they need. But honestly for the benefits and what resource I’ve gotten out of it, it’s a lot and it varies from community, whether it’s with my mentee and making that connection of seeing their similar background and being able to understand where they come from and how to help them.

Through the networking opportunities, we as BMC, we host mock interviews. This last semester in February, we had mock interviews, we had alumni and even people who aren’t necessarily alumni bar, just connections from people in engineering. I got to meet Ken who unfortunately, the positions were full, but he still looked over my resume, he gave me free advice. So it’s always helpful. There’s more to even small things that students might not think about, but going to the events and there being food, that’s one thing off you’re worried for the day. [inaudible 00:11:22] at the event, you also go get to meet other mentees who you could… when they’re not your mentee, just a part of the program you could help, that might be your mentees’ friends. There’s a lot to say, but definitely so much to benefit from. I think the most important thing though is that community, whether it’s with your mentee or with the mentors and making those connections.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. Zainab, can you tell us in your experience?

Zainab Alyosha:
I was a mentor for the Women in Engineering Society and it was great meeting mentees. And one of the things I really liked about the program is I’m helping my mentees, but I’m also learning from the mentees as well. And I really liked the biweekly workshops where I learned a lot about different resources and also about the college of engineering. And I just learned a lot and that really benefited me to help my mentees with the resources that I learned about. I think one of the obstacles that I faced before coming to Berkeley was I didn’t really know about the resources and I didn’t feel I have a community before coming to the fall semester and I really needed that community. And just joining BMC and helping other mentees to know about different resources really makes me happy and just trying to help them and avoiding feeling not having a community here in Berkeley.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. Simon, your turn.

Simon Gonzalez:
I have a very long history with BMC, which I’m very excited about and I’ll be speaking about that later. But last year I was a deed mentor and focused on organizing events for BMC, our most popular being the preparing for your Future event, which we brought industry professionals to come speak to our mentees and even mentors, everyone benefited from that tremendously. They got help from not just from us but from professionals who have experienced Berkeley or other colleges and are now doing their own thing in industry or accomplishing great things. But now I came back from study abroad to a promotion by Marcia and I’m more of a coordinator now helping Marcia run the program. I’m excited to see how far BMC goes and I’m excited for all of our plans [inaudible 00:13:48].

Laura Vogt:
I imagine. You said you had 130 mentors this year?

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
This past year we had 112 mentors.

Laura Vogt:
Oh, 112 mentors. I mean, I can’t imagine the coordinating and all the different things that you’re trying to pull together to make everybody be able to be successful and connect and I just think it’s such an awesome program. What are some of the key objectives of the program?

Caesar:
So overall, BMC aims to increase the access and equity for everyone in our community by providing culture, all everything engineering students and feel valued and supported across by your mentor, peer mentors in the program, the faculty and the staff at engineering. Our goal is to ensure that the students feel prepared to really unlock their individual and collective potential at Berkeley by mentors paying it forward and hopefully the mentees paying it forward in the future as well. And BMC serves scholars at every stage from the mentees who are first using transfers to the mentors of our program who are any upperclassmen. And we do that by supporting them through their academic careers, creating a pipeline of support to enhance the whole holistic wellness. And I could add a little more.

For me personally, nothing that I as a mentor, my mentee was making sure that they know they belong at Berkeley, whether it’s through their academics or finding a social life and it could be a balance of both, but definitely Imposter Syndrome is real and that’s what I tried to focus on with my mentee the first couple of weeks of Berkeley. It’s a big change and throughout the whole year I make sure that my mentee, he feels welcome and he knows he has a place in Berkeley engineering.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. What is the importance of having a mentor? Is it a one-time thing? How long should that relationship last?

Zainab Alyosha:
The purpose of having a mentor is to find someone that you can [inaudible 00:15:50] and it’s good to talk to another student who went through the same struggle or the obstacles that you’re facing right now as a mentee or as a student in general in Berkeley. So there would be someone to get a guidance from the networking, skill development, a perspective and approaches and accountability. And the relationship, I guess it’s not something that you decide how long it lasts, but it just depends on the person and as long as you communicate with each other and making the mentee feel comfortable to reach out whenever they want to and just feeling that there’s someone they can reach out to and ask them questions that is also something that would be really helpful for them.

Alisson Moreno:
I think in general too, a really big goal of the program is to have mentors use their experience, whether that be one year of experience at Berkeley or two or three and use that experience and help mentees with that experience to accomplish their goals. And in terms of duration, I think time and time again we see relationships go from mentorship to friendships. I myself am still friends with my mentor from when I was a freshman. I just saw her graduate. I love to see her succeed, but we’re great friends and so a lot of times we see relationships like that go from mentorship to friendship, [inaudible 00:17:20].

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
I’d like to add something. I think Alisson and Zainab are right, it’s hard to put duration to offer a due date of when their relationship will end. I don’t think that’s possible and I’m so glad to hear that you’re friends with your former mentors. That’s wonderful. But for me as the program manager, I do ask for a one-year commitment. That’s all I ask for, a one-year commitment. And they have flexibility that they have is tremendous. They can meet every week if they’d like or they can meet once a month. They can make it work the way they see it fit with their schedules and social life that they have. Some mentors and mentees will meet to study together. Some mentors and mentees will go out for a coffee or boba tea, anything. So they can do any social or academic activities together just to support each other. And that’s the other thing that I wanted to mention that it is a two-way street. Mentors are also learning a lot from the mentees and getting that support as well.

Maybe the mentees will not bring a lot of resources for the mentors, but I think it will definitely enrich their experience here at Berkeley. And so it’s really nice to be a mentor as well. Okay. Sorry, just wanted to add that.

Laura Vogt:
No, that sounds great. Thank you. Can any of you share any success stories or a notable impact of the mentorship program?

Simon Gonzalez:
Like I said, I have a very long history with BMC and it actually holds a very special place in my heart because I don’t think I’d be where I am now if it wasn’t for BMC. Coming into Berkeley as a freshman. I was completely lost and had no idea what I was doing. I was six hours from home, first generation and Berkeley is academically rigorous, so I was scared. But I found BMC through prep and they held a mixture where we were able to meet the mentors and it was kind of like a pairing event. And that’s where I spoke to my mentor Alan, Alan [inaudible 00:19:34]. We were from a pretty close back home and we just found so much in common that day that we decided to pair up and he showed me the ropes from succeeding academically in Berkeley to being independent outside of school. He’s been tremendous. And that mentorship led to a full-on friendship. Last semester, we studied abroad together, which was really fun.

And it’s things like that that you would never think would come out of a mentorship program. It was great building a tight community with him. And that relationship also helped me with my path in BMC. I started as a mentee, came back as a mentor, lead mentor, and now I’m helping run the program. I hope everyone has similar experiences with BMC and that’s our goal ultimately. We want everyone to feel welcome, feel like they belong and do great things together.

Laura Vogt:
So as we looked at the future, how do you see mentorship programs evolving the engineering college?

Simon Gonzalez:
Before I answer that, is it okay if I add on a little more about the success stories?

Laura Vogt:
Of course.

Simon Gonzalez:
And whatnot? So for mine it’s a little different. I’ve had two mentees that I’m close with. One was from junior and one from’s [inaudible 00:21:02] as I was a senior. But just for the mentoring, it goes both ways and it shows a lot with my one from junior year, Alan [inaudible 00:21:09] because he works for the CAE, so he’s someone good to know. And that was Muriel. And with him, when I was his mentor, Muriel’s brother had already graduated from Berkeley, so he didn’t need so much of my guidance, but he knew I was there if he needed questions. He mainly came to me around taking classes. But it turned out to be that we were coworkers both. He was a student assistant, I was the tutor. So we got close through that. This year, even though we weren’t officially mentee and mentor through BMC, we continue that relationship and he would come in and ask for advice with which professors to take.

And now this summer he’s actually in San Diego for an internship. So I was like, “Hey bro, let me know when you need land. I’ll pick you up from the airport. If you need a ride, I’ll show you those spots.” And so I’m going to see him at the end of this week. So that’s how that was. And then this last mentee I had my final year at Berkeley, he was close to my heart. He had also similar my background, so he’s from Central Valley, but he’s also Latinx and first generation and with him, I took advantage of that. I knew it was my last year physically at Cal, so I did my best. One day he told me he got sick, so I took him my sweaters and Mexican medicine. He had an exam the following week for him. I even helped him with figuring out how to get housing after his first year and I ended up selling some of my furniture to him. So it worked out.
But I made it clear to him. I’m like, “I might not be in the bay. I don’t know where I’m going to be, but you can always text me for advice.” I sent him some of my exams and he knows that if he ever needs some advice, he could always text me even though I’m already graduated, but I’ll always be his mentor. So that’s how I wanted to make the most out of it. So if only up to the mentor, the mentee to foster that relationship.

Laura Vogt:
That’s awesome, thank you. So as we look to the future, how do you see mentorship programs evolving within the engineering college?

Simon Gonzalez:
So as you know already we have eight families and the goal is that within center is a lot of identities that maybe you don’t identify one or many. And we want to continue to expand that program by making sure that everyone could find a place with a community of their own. And so for coming soon we have a new family, which is the Disability Justice Family. For a lot of students who might be DSP, they might not know what that is from physical or mental disabilities to make people more aware of that, that they have resources on campus to help them succeed at Cal.

Zainab Alyosha:
So the main goal of the BMC program is to target freshmen and transfer students. And one of the things I wish that I had was meeting students who were already attending Berkeley in the summer before coming in the fall. I wish that I really know about many resources that would really help me. For example, choosing classes. I really wish that I knew, for example, the Engineering Student Services and meeting with my college advisors and taking advices from them regarding signing up for classes or joining different communities here in Berkeley. Also, one of the main goals is also help students to transition into the College of Engineering before their full enrollment. And also providing them with help and support in general. And that’s why we’re going to have the summer sessions with the College of Engineering to try to help students before transition into Berkeley and start the goal.

Alisson Moreno:
So this is very specific to my family, but we also as a program want to improve and bring more resources to the undocumented engineering family. We’ve only had the undocumented engineering family for one year. This was our first year having it. So we’ve learned a lot past year. And even though we’ve done a lot of great things, even both academically and socially, we’ve had a lot of events like study jams, professional workshops, resume building and cover letter building and social events like plan giveaways and game nights and stuff like that. We’ve learned a lot this past year about the needs of undocumented students and we definitely want to apply that knowledge that we have now to improve and better serve undocumented students here at Berkeley.

Caesar:
So as a part of the Engineering Student Services, we want workshops to be accessible to all students. And so we offer a wide range of workshops such as applying to internships, negotiating internship offers, and full-time offers, applying to grad school and a lot of workshop topics that aren’t usually offered on campus. So we want to bring that information to the incoming students and have that information be readily available to them.

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
Thank you. And I would like to add one last part that we are launching this fall, and that’s the professional mentor cohort I’m very excited about this. Excited is going to be offered through the call alumni community and of course engineers who would like to give back to the community. Talking about full circle here, students who have graduated from Berkeley coming back and wanting to be professional mentors. The students who will benefit from that program will be juniors and seniors mostly, because they are getting ready to graduate and it’s more relevant for them. So maybe as fresh and recent transfers, actually transfers are juniors. For transfers, definitely transfer students will be able to take advantage of this, both juniors and seniors. But fresh might not be so it might not be so relevant for them because they’re exploring Berkeley first and adjusting to what their new university life is.

And so it might not be something for them right now, but it will be available to them as they start thinking about upper division courses and internships and then what to do next after graduation, whether that’s grad school or the industry. Either way, they’ll have people to support them. So we’ll be adding both Cal alumni who are in the industry as well as current PhD students who are graduate students here and who can offer a lot of different resources and information about research and positions. Sorry about the little bells there. But I think it’s going to be an exciting program to be partnering now with the Cal Alumni Mentor program.

Laura Vogt:
Oh, I think that’s great. I mean, you are going to end up having students that are part of your mentor program for much longer than that four years of their undergrad time. I know I want to talk about… the one thing we haven’t talked about was how to apply and what are the deadlines.

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
How to apply, I will be sending out the application form to all of our incoming students. So they will have that in their inbox sometime in late June or early July. And the other thing that they’re going to receive an invitation for is the sessions that signup was mentioning that we want to connect with them a little sooner this time and not wait until the fall. So sometime toward the end of June. So receive an invitation to join the sessions is going to be two or three online workshops. And that will cover what we do here at the Engineering Student Services. What different resources they can take advantage of. And then go into more detail by having Q&As with the mentors and maybe peer advisors so they can ask their questions. And then of course I will be sharing the information about the application through those sessions as well. But they’ll have it in their email.

We’ll be posting it also. It’s posted currently on our website, which is managed by Laura. Wonderful Laura here asking us the question today. So the application is also posted there on our website and it’s open the end of August. So we are not calling it this year a deadline. We are calling it a priority deadline. So meaning that we’re going to… by August the 29th, we’re going to take all of those students and pair them up with their mentors and they’ll have priority. But I will leave the application open because maybe someone will miss the deadline or they have not considered joining, but they decide to join a little later and everybody’s going to be welcome. However, the priority means that maybe I will not be able to match them with the same major, or maybe I will not be able to match them with someone from the family that they are choosing to participate in.

And it’s going to be maybe their second choice, but I’ll do my best to honor what they are requesting and I will still welcome them into the program so they can have access to all of the different resources.

Laura Vogt:
And do you have an email that if anyone wants more information that they can reach out to?

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
Yes, we have. Well, we have two different emails. One is my personal email. That is marcia_cantillana@berkeley.edu. That’s again Marcia, M-A-R-C-I-A, underscore, Cantillana, C-A-N-T-I-L-L-A-N-A @berkeley.edu. And students are also welcome to email our BMC email address, which is bmc_engineering@berkeley.edu. Alisson wants to add something about the Instagram account.

Alisson Moreno:
For updates and just for future events, people can follow us at BMC engineers on Instagram so they can have updates and upcoming events. We’ll post them there.

Marcia Breslin-Cantillana:
And the application is also posted there.

Alisson Moreno:
And the application is also-

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you everyone so much for being on the podcast today. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to the Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. We’ll be back next week with more info and resources for your time here at Berkeley.