Documentation: E-mail text sent to international mentor applicants

Thank you for your email and your interest in the mentor programme.

Unfortunately we have decided not to use international students as mentors for the spring semester.

During the autumn semester we have been happy to have international students volunteer to be mentors, and their hard work has been highly appreciated. However, being an international mentor has proven to be a lot harder than being a Danish mentor, and the time and effort the international students have put in to planning activities has been great considering that this is volunteer work. Danish mentors typically have a better idea of how the Danish system works (both within the University and the city/country), and this knowledge is important when planning events for the mentees.

The main purpose of the mentor programme is to help international students get integrated in to Danish society and culture. Danish students are known to be hard to know, and international students have requested more contact with Danish students in order to be integrated into student life at The Faculty of Humanities. New research shows that international students are at risk of feeling lonely and leaving before they initially intended. We hope the mentor programme can prevent this from happening.

Taking both factors in to consideration it has been decided that we only receive applications for the mentor programme from Danish students

If you have any questions or reactions to this information, you are very welcome to contact us at hum-international@hum.ku.dk