Using Strengths to Mentor Students

Abstract

Since fall 2011, the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities has offered over 10,000 incoming first-year students the Clifton StrengthsFinder inventory within a larger framework of the StrengthsQuest higher education program. This presentation highlights a collaborative campus-wide approach to building students’ strengths, with a focus on how to use strengths through mentorship in a variety of student affairs divisions and how this can greatly benefit students. This presentation will also assist practitioners seeking to implement one-to-one strengths-based activities into their own professional practice, their unit, and/or at their institution.