mentoring

1. 1
   noununcountable

   An arrangement in which an experienced person guides and supports someone with less experience.

   Like an apprentice learning a trade by working alongside a master craftsman.

   The university offers mentoring to first-year students who need guidance settling in.

   Effective mentoring depends on regular meetings and honest feedback between both people.

   Similarmentorship, guidance, coaching, tutoring

   Note

   Unlike the verb form, the noun takes adjectives rather than a direct object: effective mentoring, peer mentoring, formal mentoring. It is mostly a mass noun used without an article (the university offers mentoring). The plural mentorings exists for separate arrangements counted one by one. If a person follows directly after the word, you are looking at the verb instead.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of mentor.

   The professor is mentoring several graduate students this semester.

   Volunteers are mentoring at-risk youth through the community program.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. In progressive tenses it is a verb (she is mentoring two students); as a gerund it names the activity itself (mentoring takes patience). Either way the verb is transitive, so the person guided follows directly with no preposition: mentoring new staff. Behind it stands Mentor, the counselor Odysseus left to raise his son Telemachus while he fought at Troy.

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