Off to a good start: The inaugural program cohort officially kicked off on June 30 with 93 mentor-mentee pairs. Some of those pairs had the opportunity to get to know each other face to face in Chicago at the 2025 Annual Conference.
Mentor Match was squarely in the spotlight right at the conference start of the conference when ANS Executive Director/CEO Craig Piercy discussed during the opening plenary the recent demographic shifts the Society has experienced. “ANS is witnessing a period of unprecedented growth and change within our membership ranks, and that presents us with both an incredible opportunity and a formidable challenge,” he said. “Today, we have more ANS members under the age of 40 than under 65, and our student membership has grown over 70 percent with no sign of slowing.”
The difficulty, Piercy explained, is that students are also the “most challenging group of members to retain.” Part of the solution to that problem is Mentor Match, which can encourage students to stay in the industry and Society by giving them a community and tangible support.
Panel discussion: Mentor Match was also in focus during a technical session sponsored by the ANS Young Members Group: “Mentorship Matters: Building the Future Through Guidance and Support.”
During the session, Gale Hauck, senior R&D staff for Innovative Nuclear Reactors at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, talked about mentorship through the lens of the Eisenhower matrix, which has importance and urgency on its axes. “Mentoring is very important, but never urgent,” she explained. “The more we can be in that important-but-not-urgent quadrant, the better off we will be.”
Amir Bahadori, the director of the Nuclear Engineering Program at Kansas State University, highlighted the value of a program like Mentor Match from another perspective, saying that mentorship is an invaluable way to “spread the wealth,” kicking off a process wherein proactive students who seek mentoring go on to lead student groups and then become mentors themselves.
Looking ahead: Fifty-four mentees have already registered in advance for the fall cohort, and many more are sure to come. To support those students, early-career and established professionals (as well as college students) are strongly encouraged to sign up to be a mentor here.
With investment in and plans around new nuclear development on a meteoric rise in the U.S., a large future workforce is needed now more than ever across every part of the industry. On the mentor side, the program represents an opportunity to help foster that workforce; on the mentee side, it’s a chance to find guidance in joining that workforce.
