Buddy and mentor programs are among the highest-return investments in international student success — a new arrival paired with someone who has already made every first-semester mistake. The concept thrives everywhere. The administration, almost everywhere, is a spreadsheet held together by one person's diligence.
Why spreadsheet mentoring stalls
Matching is manual, so it happens in batches, late — students arrive in week one and meet their mentor in week five, after the window when a buddy matters most. Nobody can see which pairs are active and which dissolved after one coffee; the program reports the number of matches made, not the number that worked. Mentors get no shared resources, so each invents the role alone — some brilliantly, some not at all. And when the coordinator changes, the program's entire memory walks out the door in an .xlsx attachment.
What a program hub provides
Forms capture mentee needs and mentor offers in matchable shape — language, program, interests, availability — so pairing is fast and informed. Community Channels give each cohort of pairs a shared space, and mentors their own room to swap what works. Program guidance lives where every mentor finds it, not in one inbox. The program becomes an institution instead of a heroic individual effort.
Six steps inside SumHubs
You don't have to start from a blank page.
The buddy and mentor program hub is a free SumHubs template — configured with your matching criteria in an afternoon. Request a sample hub to see a cohort run through it.