Current Mentors | Saturday Academy

Information for ASE Mentors

Preparing for the Internship

This year's ASE Selection timeline is posted here. You will receive applications for your position by March 24th. Please submit your rankings by April 14th.

If you are a mentor in any of the following organizations, please contact ASE: Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon National Primate Research Center, Portland State University – Computer Science, VA Portland Health Care System. These organizations have specific protocols for the onboarding process. ASE can connect you with the appropriate contact in your organization to move forward with this process.

It is important to make sure that you’ve identified a work station for your intern and key supervisors for your intern throughout the summer.

While there will always be some improvisation, it is best to have a master plan for the full eight weeks. You can find a sample work plan listed in the Additional Resources tab. The most typical pitfall is not preparing enough for the students to do. A significant number of first-time mentors report that their interns finished the summer’s projects in a couple of weeks. Because of this, we recommend planning one or more back-up projects or activities in advance. The clearer your expectations are, the more likely it is that the internship will be successful.

If you have not yet completed our equity training for mentors, please do so before the internship begins.

ASE Matching Process

Matching internship applicants to mentor positions is done using both the mentor and applicant preferences. As a mentor, you are responsible for reviewing the applications that have been submitted for your application and ranking applicants that you are interested in working with.

All applications can be viewed in the mentor dashboard, which is available through logging into the Saturday Academy website. Credentials are unique to each mentor, and if a mentor needs their password reset, they are welcome to contact program staff at any time.

Once mentors have logged onto the mentor dashboard, they can follow the instructions included in this guide to review, interview, and rank their selected applicants. Submitting rankings is final, and should be done before the deadline communicated by ASE, which is also listed in the mentor dashboard.

Setting the Summer Schedule

The expectation for a full-time ASE internship is eight full-time weeks between the middle of June and the end of August. This schedule should include about 300 hours of time at your workplace (or remote work) and three days for events and conferences (Orientation; Midsummer Conference; and Symposium). Most students start in mid to late June (once school has ended) and finish by mid to late August.

For part-time internships, students should complete between 160-240 hours, depending on your schedule. This could mean 4 weeks full-time, or 8 weeks half-time; it's up to you and your intern.

It is the intern’s responsibility to contact you to establish a suitable summer schedule, including starting and ending dates. The student will discuss their schedule with you and will fill out a calendar PDF. After coordinating with you, the intern will submit the agreed upon summer calendar to the ASE Program, and you will receive a copy by email. If you see any mistakes on this calendar, please contact your student to make corrections, and request that they submit the corrected version to ASE via email.

This year's key dates:

May 20th: Intern Orientation
May date TBD: Mentor Orientation
June 16th: Earliest start date for Internships
July 15th, 16th, or 17th: Midsummer Conference (@ University of Portland, interns only)
August 14th: Symposium (on Zoom, attendance required for interns and expected for mentors)
August 22nd: Program end date