What can professors do to help their students develop their potential? Through mentoring, professors get to know the particular reality of each student so that they can help and stimulate them and set new challenges that will help them grow during their university life.  With this objective, the University of Navarra has published a book, Tu&Co, university mentoring, a project that collects more than 60 years of experience in mentoring together with new guidelines. 

 “The aim of the Tu&Co program is to improve mentoring in the University. Gathering together the experience of many years, we have designed a methodology with different phases, tools and resources to help mentors in their work with students” points out Álvaro Lleó, professor of Human Resources in Tecnun, School of Engineering of the University of Navarra, one of the drivers behind the project and co-author of the book, edited by Eunsa (Universidad de Navarra publishing house). 

Tu&Co is a program based on the development of competencies. A project that aims to help students grow in self-knowledge and become better people and professionals. 

The book includes materials that form the basis of the methodology of Tu&Co: it describes 12 key competencies for student development such as communication, social skills, team work, capacity to manage conflicts, initiative, optimism, time management, self-knowledge, decision making, ability to make an effort, emotional stability and integrity.  It includes interviews, questionnaires, a notebook with exercises to analyze the results, a guide with ideas to develop every one of the competences and finally, two cases based on real experiences.

Experience from more than 50 professors and 150 students

The competencies have been validated by companies that employ students from the university.  For each of them, characteristic behaviors and examples are detailed with concrete examples that demonstrate what needs to be improved, questions to stimulate reflection and concrete suggestions for improvement.  On the other hand, the guides include the experiences of more than 50 teachers and nearly 150 students. Finally, a list of recommended books, articles, videos, films and tools is included to help students.