Engage MHC is Mount Holyoke's co-curricular program that provides students – you! – with the advising, resources, and tools to track, reflect on, and apply what you gain and learn from your on-campus experiences and involvement. Engage MHC is for everyone! Whether you've held leadership positions and attended numerous events or aren't even sure where to start, let alone know what are all the options available to you, Engage MHC is for you.
Cohort Advising with a Staff Co-Curricular Advisor: Engage MHC students will be cohorted into an advising group with other students and facilitated by a staff advisor – you'll have required monthly cohort coaching conversations, optional monthly cohort events, and optional semester-ly one-on-one advising. Your cohort and staff advisor are resources who can help you identify co-curricular activities that match your interests or that support you in gaining new skills and challenging yourself. They'll also help you reflect on your current experiences.
Tracking Your Co-Curricular Experiences and Involvement. Engage MHC students will be provided with an easy to use system – within the Embark platform – to log and track all of the ways you participate co-curricularly at Mount Holyoke. To fully complete the Engage MHC program you'll need to participate in 10 experiences from within 5 areas of co-curricular growth – critical thinking and decision making, collaboration and community, knowledge acquisition and application, social responsibility and civic engagement, and career and self development.
Those Who Complete Engage MHC. Engage MHC students who complete the program will leave with a co-curricular credential that you can use on your resume, recognition at this year's Leadership and Service Awards, cool swag, and more!
The co-curricular is the experiences you take part in – such as student organization or sports team involvement, attending lectures and events, participating in an internship, having a job on-campus – that allow you to practice and reflect on what you're learning at Mount Holyoke. It can be formal or informal opportunities, and the co-curricular are those experiences where you get to learn new things, apply what you already know, fail and try again, and think about how your skills continue to grow and change to meet the needs of any situation you're in.
Certain pre-identified experiences will count toward the 10 required experiences and participants will have the option to submit for inclusion activities not pre-identified. Examples of already identified experiences include (this is not an exhaustive list!):
| Student employment | Student org memberhsip | Participating in MoZone workshop |
|---|---|---|
| Attending a Cultural Center event | Major or academic department event | Attending a residence hall event |
| Participating in PHE workshop | Varsity or club team membership | Serving in positional leadership role |
Who can participate?
Engage MHC is open to all new students! No previous experience of any sort is needed to participate.
What do participants gain?
Cohort of other students and a staff co-curricular advisor
Monthly cohort coaching sessions
Twice monthly cohort events
Co-curricular credential(s)
Leadership and Service Awards invitation and recognition
Swag
Other surprises!
What is the time commitment?
In order to officially complete Engage MHC, students must participate in 10 experiences, submit the post-experience survey and reflection, and attend all monthly cohort coaching conversations. Students should anticipate attending, Engage events and meet-ups, one-on-one advising sessions each semester and to participate in the Embark Engage MHC online group.
We would estimate the monthly time commitment to be 2-4 hours plus the experiences selected by participants.
What do we mean by year two?
Last year was the first iteration of the Engage MHC program and now in year two we want to continue working with student participants to get their feedback about the program and to use that feedback to refine!
