Nearly 20 people gathered for the opening of Hillel’s Leadership and Education through Alumni Partnerships with Students. The program, new to Temple, took its first step by introducing current students to their alumni mentors for the semester.
The program, according to a Hillel announcement, “will provide great networking for students to learn about their fields of interest, will guide with practical job advice and nurture valuable leadership skills.” In addition, the announcement said, “mentors will help shape the career of a student, support their alma mater and contribute to the vitality of the Jewish community.”
Sam Levin, a sophomore Public Relations major, was assigned to Temple graduate Rachel Salis-Silverman, who works in the public relations-marketing department at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Explaining why she joined the program, Levin told CampusJ “I just saw it in an email and I was was thinking about maybe trying to get a mentor, and it was perfect timing so I signed up, just from that.”
Junior Ariel Weissburg, a Marketing and Public Health major, who plans on pursing Public Health in grad school was paired up with Dr. Howard Greenburg. Greenburg, who was educated at Cornell, the University of Pennsylvannia, Drexel, and finally Thomas Jefferson Medical College, currently works in the Clinical Pharmacology Unit in a New Jersey branch of Bristol-Myers Squibb. Greenberg is also active in the non-profit community, performing volunteer work.
Weissburg explained that she’s looking for guidance in the program. “I have a lot of ideas and a very broad end goal, and I don’t know how to achieve these goals and develop a concrete plan,” she told CampusJ.
Both students told CampusJ they were pleased with the results of the program. And while Weissburg offered a short “It went very well,” Levin had a little more to say on the subject:

It was much smaller than I expected. We had some people make speeches. Lorraine Cohen led the presentation. She had us all get up and network, (basically go around and speak with people we didn’t know, and make “small talk.” We learned a lot about building and maintaining relationships. Everyone was very nice including my mentor Rachel. She is eager to help and interested in getting to know me. I actually excused myself a little early because I was sick. But, I was impressed with the whole night. Candy Emerson ran the event and she did a beautiful job. I was also inspired by a young student who was obviously severely handicapped and determined to go to law school.

This was the first of many meetings between the students and their mentors, as the students will be spending the rest of the semester under the wing of their mentors, learning about their fields.