Peer Mentoring

The Project for New Mexico Graduates of Color (PNMGC) is a student-led program that aims to build social, cultural, and academic communities of support among underrepresented students at UNM. The foundation of PNMGC is our Peer Mentoring Program, which partners students—from across disciplines and levels—based upon their preferences (language, academic interests, gender, cultural/ethnic identities, etc.). All participants attend a mentoring orientation each semester, which provides them with best practices, peer mentoring resources, and tools to develop a plan for meeting and communicating with their mentor or mentee throughout their mentoring experience. PNMGC hosts a variety of events throughout the semester to encourage student engagement, trust building among peer mentors, and a greater sense of community for UNM students. Peer Mentoring partners are eligible for Peer Mentoring Scholarships, awarded at the end of the semester.



Our mentoring philosophy reflects the diversity of our organization and the broad spectrum of students we serve:

PNMGC believes in the power of peer support relationships to help students of all backgrounds succeed academically, professionally, and personally. Through peer mentorship we positively engage students’ identities, strengths, and interests to create leaders on campus, in classrooms, and in the community. PNMGC’s mentoring philosophy borrows from the abundance model of teaching and learning, which asserts that all students have the capability to succeed, and particular stigmatized backgrounds or cultures are not viewed as deficits, but as powerful assets for these students and their academic institutions.


New Automatic PNMGC Attendance/Requirement Status System!

The PNMGC team frequently receives questions from participants about how many events they have attended or how far they are from fulfilling their semester requirements. We have implemented a very simple system for you to be able to receive this information directly to your email in an instant with our current up-to-date information.

  1. Send an email to gradpeer@unm.edu from any email address with your 9-digit UNM ID (eg. 101423756) number as the subject of the email. Make sure that this is the ONLY text in the subject line.
  2. Don't enter anything into the body of the email. Entering text won't affect the process at all, but your email will automatically be filtered once we receive it, so we won't see anything you typed if you intended for us to read it. After verifying that your ID number was typed correctly, send the email.
  3. Wait roughly 30 seconds to a minute. If your ID number was incorrect, nothing will happen and you can simply try again. If your ID number was correct, you will receive a new email from gradpeer@unm.edu that goes over your orientation status, total number of attended workshops and social events, a comprehensive list of specifically which workshops and social events you have attended, and the status of your four required Peer Mentoring Sessions.

Once you have received this email, you do not have to respond to it unless you have questions or concerns about the listed information. Otherwise, you can simply ignore it.

Notes About Status Checks:

• You will receive your Status Check email to the email address you listed in your Mentor/Mentee application at the beginning of the semester. You can send the initial email from any address, but the returned Status Check will arrive at the email address we associate with your ID number based on your application. This prevents anyone from requesting your data by sending a request using your ID number, as the response will always be sent to the email we know is yours.

• You can repeat this process as often as you would like. It is automatic and we do not see these emails as they are immediately filtered out of our inbox.

• Mentoring session tracking forms may take a day or so to be updated. If you just submitted a session tracking form, it likely won't appear if you submit a Requirement Status Check immediately after. Contact us only if you have already waited at least 48 hours and are still missing credit for your tracking form.

• If anything looks wrong in your listed attendance, contact us immediately as the provided attendance exactly mirrors our up-to-date attendance records, and an error indicates that we may currently have a mistake that we are not aware of.

 

Peer Mentoring Program Requirements

  • Be a degree-seeking registered student at UNM
  • Submit the Mentor/Mentee Application by August 25th
  • Attend a mandatory student orientation by September 1st
  • Attend 3 PNMGC workshops throughout the semester
  • Attend 1 PNMGC social event throughout the semester
  • Meet with your mentor/mentee for a minimum of one hour for 4 mentoring sessions
  • Submit 4 separate Mentoring Session Tracking forms by November 30th
  • Submit the Scholarship Application by December 8th
  • Submit 500 word minimum reflection with Scholarship Application by December 8th
Requirements are subject to change each semester
 
 
 

Fall 2023 Deadlines

  • Mentor/Mentee Application | August 25th
  • Orientation | September 1st
  • Mentor Tracking Sheets | November 30th
  • Scholarship Application | December 8th