Becoming YU

Becoming YU provides students with a framework to set meaningful goals, identify the skills they want to develop to achieve those goals, and provide them with tools to reflect on and track their progress. Through Becoming YU students will recognize the value of their experiences, have greater clarity about their leadership and career goals, and articulate their skills and accomplishments with confidence!

Who can be a Coach?

The role of the “coach” in the Becoming YU program is a role that helps facilitate the student’s development and progress towards achieving their desired goals and objectives. It does not include any supervision or performance management tasks, and therefore it is not to provide feedback on how the student is performing in their role. It is a role that can be filled by YUSA staff or student leaders, in addition to managers.

Becoming YU provides a framework for the helping relationship that already exists between our staff and student-staff, and between peers. 

The role includes providing student-staff with the following:

• Offering check-ins to ensure that they are getting the most out of their work/study positions.
• Helping them set goals/objectives and discussing how these align with the unit’s overall goals and objectives and if they are realistic goals. 
• Discussing with them which skills-building experiences or projects may help the student achieve their objectives.  
• Assisting them to remain on track with their skills development and provide them with feedback on their learning objectives.
• Discussing their accomplishments and whether objectives were met and to provide feedback on their skills development.

As a mentor or coach of these students, you will be asked to have regular check-ins with your students to provide on-boarding/orientation to the position/role and your team, work with your students to set annual learning objectives that relate to their position/role specifically, encourage students to reflect on and record their experiences and skills development and discuss skills-building activities and projects.

Step 1. Experience Details, Goal Setting & Skills Selection

Meet with your student soon after they begin their position/role with you - ideally within the first 2 weeks. Provide them with an orientation to the position/role. It can be part of your regular on-boarding process.

Step 2. Mid-Way Check-In

Meet with your students halfway through their position/role to review the “Mid-Way Check-in” section and discuss the status of their learning objectives. During this meeting, confirm that your student is on track and provide them with feedback on their learning objectives and skills development to date.

Step 3. Final Check-In

Meet with your students at the end of their position to review the learning objectives that were outlined at the start of their experience. During this final meeting, discuss the student’s accomplishments and whether objectives were met and be sure to provide feedback on their skills development.

Coaches' Playbook

The Coaches’ Playbook provides you with some tips and guidelines on how to make the most of your interactions with your students. Recognizing that some coaches have many students and can’t meet with them all individually, prefer to meet in groups or already have established student onboarding programs, the  Coaches’ Playbook is simply a guideline and you are encouraged to be creative in how you roll out this program with your students.

Group Check-in Models

For those of you who coach groups of five or more students, you will probably want to consider running group check-ins. To give you some ideas, here are group check-in models for the Goal Setting session, Mid-Way session and Final Session. Feel free to use them and tailor them to your specific groups and departments.