Empire State College Mentor Learning

Can anyone tell me about the Empire State College Mentor learning program? I plan to enroll at the Hudson Valley location. It's been 20 years since my college days and I hope this will be a good fit for helping me finish!

Thanks

Empire State College: New York -> www.esc.edu

 

I finished a post about this but then it got lost. First, Hello! I went to the Rochester location of Empire State College. There I was assigned a mentor and together we designed a degree program which takes a great deal of time. I was then assigned several mentors all of which had degrees in the areas I wished to study. I also gained 32 credits towards my B.S. degree through work experience and CLEP exams. 128 credita are needed for the B.S. degree, or at least it did when I was there. I graduated in 1993. Some mentors are good, some not so good. I had one where I had more knowledge than she did and it riled her so much that I would challenge her that she gave me a "c" for the course.....so be careful. It is a very independent form of study and one must be very disciplined to succeed there.....there is no hand holding and is more for adults than the 18-25 year old crowd. Feel free to ask me anything that may come to your mind about this.

 

Hi Way,
Thanks for your response! I'm sure I'll have lots of questions and I'll appreciate anything you can offer. Let me hit you with a few!

I'm anxious about knowing what it will take to complete everything and I don't feel I'm getting clear answers from the mentors. I spoke with my primary mentor last week. I'm already to get started full force and he couldn't meet me until the end of this month. Does this have anything to do with what you mean about needing to be self disciplined and not to rely on any hand holding?

How much time/effort will it take before I will know what exactly will be expected of me over the next x? years.

 

Hi Scott,

I don't know why your primary mentor is taking so long to meet with you but perhaps he has a scheduling conflict.

Once the both of you get down to mapping out your degree requirements, it will be up to you to get that paperwork and typing completed. If everything is straight forward and you are diligent in getting it done, it probably won't take more than a couple of weeks. Once that is done, you will work at a pace that is comfortable for you and your mentors will probably be very flexible with your scheduling time with them. When I went to ESC each course required a "learning contract" which outlined all the requirements that had to be met to complete the course. Once those requirements are met, the course is finished.

Once you get the ball rolling, I think you will find that the learning experience will be a good one.

 

Thanks again Way. If the mentors are clear about what I need to do, I will be diligent at making the goals. What I'm not good at is trying to fill in the blanks and guessing about what I should be doing. During the orientation we were shown an example of a learning contract but I didn't et a copy and don't remember exactly how it was formed.

I'm sure I'll have more questions for you as I get more involved. thanks again for filling me in.

 

I graduated from Empire State istance Learning program, and had a great experience. But you do need to be careful because not all mentors are as caring. Alot is indenpendent. I would do it again, but would be a must smarter student.

 

Thanks. I have my first meeting with the mentor this Monday. I'll post back with how that went.