About SAMI

SAMI Mission

Harvard's Student-Alumni Mentoring Initiative (SAMI) strives to enhance the academic, professional, and personal experiences of the Ed School's graduate students and alumni. The program supports mentor relationships between local alumni and current master's and doctoral students. Through this effort, SAMI hopes to inspire a community of mentors dedicated to fostering growth and development spanning multiple generations of students, teachers, and leaders.

SAMI Program Vision

Educational = To create an intellectually rich dialogue about mentoring relationships and practical implications encompassing the interests of students, alumni, faculty, administrators and the HGSE community.

Professional = To cultivate reciprocal learning relationships in which students and alumni benefit from shared professional experiences, aspirations, and interests.

Community = To enrich the HGSE experience for both students and alumni; and to increase dialogue within and beyond the greater Harvard environs.

The Program

The idea for Harvard's Student-Alumni Mentoring Initiative was generated during the 2002-2003 academic year by two Master's students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The program was piloted during the 2003-2004 academic year, with an initial cohort limited to seventeen mentor-mentee pairs. This pilot explored the value of bringing together members from the student body with the local alumni community. Since then the program has grown to include 54 matched pairs in 2006. In addition, the alumni relations office has continued to employ a current student as the SAMI coordinator providing a development opportunity for a GSE student each year.