Mentoring NEWPATH Students

Each NEWPATH student, from the time of joining the program through completion of the e-practicum, will have assigned CSE faculty and business faculty to provide advice and mentoring. In addition, carefully selected members of the TechColumbus personnel as well as staff of its affiliate companies who are familiar with the NEWPATH program and its goals, will be assigned to mentor students in various issues related to successful entrepreneurship. These issues may range from understanding the day-to-day problems that a small entrepreneur faces to raising venture capital to networking with other entrepreneurs to learn not only from their successes but also from their failures.

Every effort will be made to tap industry practitioners who may have served as supervisors of NEWPATH students during their internships to serve as mentors. These practitioners would have firsthand experience with the students and would have worked closely with them. Similarly, in the longer term, NEWPATH graduates who go on to establish successful IT ventures will be tapped to serve as mentors for NEWPATH students.

Computing faculty who serve as advisors to NEWPATH students will primarily provide advice and guidance about technical computing topics. But since these faculty are part of the NEWPATH program, this advice will be tailored to help achieve the program's outcomes. For example, if a student seems to be interested in a technical idea that has the potential to serve as a core concept (or even an auxiliary one) for a marketable product or service, the student will be referred to the NEWPATH business faculty as well as appropriate TechColumbus and other industry mentors to help the student investigate this potential. Similarly, the NEWPATH business faculty who advise students in the program will work closely with computing faculty and industry mentors to help students understand both business opportunities and potential pitfalls. It is expected that this combination of computing faculty, business faculty and industry mentors working closely with NEWPATH students will help nurture entrepreneurship in these students and produce the next generation of IT entrepreneurs.