Felicia SAMIN, Year 4 student of Dual Degree Program in Technology and Management, was awarded Prof Edmond Ko Scholarships for Student Mentoring with her achievement and dedication in peer mentoring.

Prof Edmond Ko Scholarships for Student Mentoring honors students who contributed significantly to the HKUST community as mentors to other students. Peer mentorship is an important element in one’s university life. Students can share thoughts and worries with each other. Support and constructive advises from seniors always bring positive influences in personal growth and development among peers.

Felicia started as a member in peer counselor program at HKUST and acquired a lot of theoretical knowledge on mental health and ways to handle stress. Benefited from seniors’ sharing in her early days in HKUST, she thought that it would be nice to share her experience to others as well. “I can make new friends, at the same time, I can learn from them too. What I mean by learning is to understand and be inspired on how different people may look at one problem from different perspectives and may have different approaches to solve it.” said Felicia. From Year 2 onwards, she started her mentoring journey as a student advisor in iGEM, a synthetic biology competition, a teaching assistant of an engineering course and a mentor of student hall.

Because of Felicia’s positive personality, peers see her as a comforting and warm mentor to talk to. She is always willing to share her academic, career, or even life experience. She added, “I believe that sharing is caring and a fun way of learning. I believe by sharing to others, it helps us to show how we care about others and make both parties feel contented. I have gained a lot of meaningful experiences from these past four years from being a peer counselor, student advisor, teaching assistant, and a hall mentor – different titles but same objectives: mentorship. All these mentorship programs have been fruitful to me.”

Felicia is grateful to be offered with many chances in HKUST.  She encouraged students to take initiative to ask and share “it is common that some people feel uncomfortable to ask questions just for many reasons. Whatever it is, as long as you ask politely, people would take it positively. So, be humble, ask for advice and make new friends!”