What It Is
Through the Work Study and Mentoring program, students enter a one-on-one working relationship with professors from various divisions across campus. Working with students, professors guide them through research and practicums applicable to their specific areas of interest and study.

Why It Is a Priority
The Work Study and Mentoring Program at BYU—Idaho not only exemplifies the well-known tradition of caring and personal working relationships between faculty and students, but enables students to actually apply recently acquired knowledge in close partnership with a professor who mentors him or her through the process. And because the faculty at BYU—Idaho is focused on the scholarship of learning and teaching, there are some elements of curriculum, especially research, that professors are simply unable to do without assistance.

What It Does and How It Helps
Instead of accepting one of the few available jobs—on campus or in the community—performing tasks with no apparent application to their field of study, participating students are paid to gain valuable work experience. Students are paid a stipend to spend up to 140 hours during a semester assisting the professor in research and essentially engaging in an apprenticeship with him or her.

In many cases, while serving within their chosen area of academic emphasis, students are able to truly see their applied knowledge make a difference in the lives of others. Whether by bettering academic course work or teaching methods at BYU–Idaho, or by simplifying specific industry processes, the experience has the potential of affecting many lives beyond that of the student.

Examples of past and current work study experiences include: researching various communication theories to be used in new curriculum, assisting in teaching music therapy techniques, and developing computerized rationing for beef and dairy farming.

Your support of the Work Study and Mentoring program will provide funds necessary to compensate students for their work as they gain real work experience and further the work of the professors for the sake of other students and people outside the campus.