First Year Mentor - Student Assistant Specialist

The First Year Mentor program is an exciting leadership opportunity for Lang students to build upon their own academic, pedagogical, and activist work, and to inspire first year students to become part of a community at Lang that values and practices a commitment to care, critical thinking, and social justice. Following a training and orientation in August and early September, First Year Mentors support a group of incoming first year students to help them make a smooth transition to Lang and engage with the campus community.

Responsibilities:

Training involves an intensive introduction to the TNS/Lang campus ecology, offering First Year Mentors an opportunity:

• Meet with various campus partners from offices, departments, and programs from across the university;
• Learn with and from Lang faculty about best pedagogical practices in and across the liberal arts;
• Build cohort community and develop a collective programmatic vision for the upcoming academic year; and
• Construct preliminary workshop curricula centered on the connections between social justice, interdisciplinarity, and the liberal arts.

At Orientation, First Year Mentors:

• offer informal support to new first year students and facilitate their arrival onto campus;
• lead an introductory seminar discussion for first year seminar students with first year seminar faculty;
• take first year seminar students on a luncheon walking tour of TNS; and
• lead a panel discussion ("How I Decided") on major and course selection processes.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Completed at least one full semester of coursework at Eugene Lang College
• In good academic standing

Preferred Qualifications:

• Facilitates conversations with ease and interacts respectfully with others
• Demonstrates (active) listening for understanding and an openness to feedback, learning, and growth
• Displays effective communication across lines of identity and difference, and exhibits awareness of how positionality conditions both what and how communication transpires
• Displays a commitment to supporting first year students and a working understanding of the various challenges and opportunities that first year students at Lang can encounter
• Possesses a broad-based investment and interest in Lang/TNS culture and community
• Committed to (and/or open to) learning about social justice struggles and to dismantling interpersonal, institutional, and structural violence at TNS and beyond
• Committed to seminar learning, process-oriented pedagogy, and the relay between academic, social, and holistic wellness

Hourly Rate: $20

Work Mode: On-campus position

The First Year Mentor program is a leadership opportunity for Eugene Lang students to support incoming first-year students as they transition to college, fostering a community grounded in care, critical thinking, and social justice. Mentors participate in extensive training, collaborate with faculty and campus partners, develop workshop curricula, and help facilitate Orientation activities, including seminars, campus tours, and academic advising panels. Ideal candidates are strong communicators who are committed to student support, inclusive community building, social justice, and the academic mission of Lang and The New School.