Back Left to Right: Mesfin Bogale, Heidi Roos, Emma Steenkamp, Catherine Molefe, Gert Marais, Karlien van Zyl, Ryan Nadel, Simon Martin, Chantel Paynter, Teresa Coutinho, DB Chettri, Sameera Ebrahim.
Middle Left to Right: Markus Wilken, Sonja Meyer, Tondani Kone, Irene Barnes, Magriet van der Nest, Lorenzo Lombaard.
Front Left to Right: Duncan Patterson, Derian Esceverri, Brenda Wingfield, Happy Maleme, Gifty Hammond, Judy Lai.

The CTHB mentorship programme continues to be a tremendous success. This year, we are supporting eight third year students and four second year students. Except for four mentors who took part in the programme in 2005, the other eight have not acted as mentors before and are all enjoying the experience very much. Our mentorship students spend six hours per week on average in the laboratories learning new skills and assisting their mentors with their projects. It is wonderful to note the enthusiasm with which the work is being done and the strong spirit of friendship growing up between mentor and mentee.

The success of the programme is assessed at six month intervals. This allows us to also intervene if problems are identified. This approach was very effective in 2005 and we anticipate that the same should be true in 2006.

Prof Brenda Wingfield, Irene Barnes and Dr Martin Coetzee have very ably led the programme this year offering advice to both mentors and students. Prof Mike Wingfield and the rest of the CTHB core team joined the full mentorship group for lunch in the FABI courtyard on Friday 26 May. The picture of mentors and mentees was taken at the lunch. Unfortunately some of our students arrived a little late and are not included in the group photo.

We wish the group every success in 2006 and hope that we will be able to stimulate some of the third year achievers to continue doing honours in genetics and microbiology in FABI next year.