Before Uyen Nguyen ever got to Cornell last fall, an upperclassman wrote to welcome her to campus and say he'd be her mentor during her first year here.

"It's easy to feel lost here because Cornell is such a big university, but having a mentor made me feel like I belonged, that people actually cared about me," said Nguyen, a freshman in Cornell's College of Human Ecology from New York City, who met with her mentor and his small group of "mentees" throughout her first semester -- skating; sharing coffee, pizza, donuts and other assorted snacks and meals; taking a library tour together; going to a hockey game; shooting pool; and meeting every other week with their faculty adviser. "Having a mentor made me feel more connected."

That novel mentoring relationship for incoming students to ease their transition here is part of a new program, the Cornell Human Ecology Partnership Program , now finishing its first year. This year the program included six mentors who were specially trained and 28 mentees in the College of Human Ecology. The program recently earned a national award from Gamma Sigma Delta International, the honorary society of the Cornell colleges of Veterinary Medicine, Agriculture and Life Sciences and Human Ecology.

"The program, which is sponsored by the College of Human Ecology and Gamma Sigma Delta, has proven so successful that the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and College of Veterinary Medicine will both be initiating similar programs in the near future," said Joe Laquatra, associate professor of design and environmental analysis at Cornell and this year's Gamma Sigma Delta president.

"Freshmen and transfer minority students at any university face huge challenges as they adapt to college life," Laquatra said. "The highly competitive atmosphere at Cornell adds to these challenges as students strive to excel in their classes and extracurricular activities. This effort places minority freshmen and transfer students -- as well as any non-minority students who wish to participate -- with a mentor who serves as a role model by successfully meeting the challenges of university life as a minority student."

Although every incoming minority student is invited to participate, Laquatra stressed that any students may serve as either a mentor or mentee.

To prepare, each mentor takes the course Mentoring in Higher Education (three credits, HE 310) taught by Gary Evans and Lorraine Maxwell, both faculty in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell. "The course not only focuses on the roles and functions of mentors in the learning process, but also examines specific issues related to mentor effectiveness, such as peer counseling skills, history and politics of American higher education, racism, culture, gender, homophobia and cross-cultural issues," Maxwell said.

"The primary objective of the mentoring course is to encourage high standards of scholarship and leadership in the College of Human Ecology through peer mentorship." Evans added, "The program provides peer mentors with the opportunity to reflect on their practice while encouraging high-quality achievement, professional ethics and devotion to services in this area of the sciences."

Nguyen's mentor was Bramdeo Singh, a senior from Yonkers, N.Y. "I participated because I wanted to take a leadership role and this was an opportunity to give something back to Cornell," he said. With six mentees -- four Asian students and two African-American students -- Singh hosted the group at his apartment, planned various social events for the group to do together and helped students pick courses for the following semester.