Hey everyone welcome back to the channel my name is Ashley i'm an Intern Architect in Ontario
and in this video we're going to be talking about how to find a mentor
and supervising architect for your internship program i'll be sharing
my experience and giving you guys some tips as well so if you're interested let's get started
so in order to become a licensed architect you need to collect 3,720 hours of experience
and in order to collect that experience you need to become a intern architect to collect
those hours so in order to become an intern architect you do not need to be employed
so you don't need your supervising architect right away but you need to have a mentor so
one of the things you'll need to do is find a mentor and how do you go about
finding a mentor and what exactly is a mentor so we're going to be talking about what a mentor is
versus a supervising architect as well your mentor is going to be important on your journey of
becoming an architect and they're going to follow along on your journey now if you decide later on
on your journey of your internship program and you feel like you and your mentor are not connecting
well the good news is that you can change mentors you're not tied to that mentor forever
so you can change mentors and of course if you do change your workplace you can also change
supervising architects as well now what is a mentor your mentor needs to be a licensed
architect or a retired architect they need to be outside of your place of employment
so they cannot be tied to where you're working and the idea of the mentor is that they're going to be
unbiased they're going to be able to help you with work relationships at the office that you're
working at and they're going to be able to help you without having the bias of working at the
place of employment in which you're working at now this is important because i find that the
one positive thing of the internship program is your mentor and the supervising architect
i found it to be very helpful and you can go to your mentor if you have any questions
or need help on deciding on where you're going or you need some direction you can go to your mentor
so your mentor will also sign your CERB which is your experience record book your experience
record book and they're going to be giving you some feedback as well so every 900 to 1000 hours
you need to submit your log and to do that your mentor needs to sign off on that log as well
and you would sit down with them and hopefully you meet with them more than just every 900-1000 hours
but the idea is that you would sit down with them and discuss any issues you're having and they
can give you some guidance and some feedback and finding a mentor can be a little bit challenging
but it's not that difficult because there is an importance in the architectural field of really
passing on that experience and knowledge that you've gained as an architect to the
next generation of architects so interns and as an architect since you already went through
that whole process the idea is that you need to also give back to the next intern who's also
in that position of wanting to get their license so in a way they're obligated to
mentor you but that could be a bit challenging because some mentors already have other interns
that they're mentoring and they don't have time to take on another intern so in so you might not get
an answer from them and to be honest when i was looking for my mentor first person that i did ask
didn't really work out for me and that's okay so i looked again and i looked for someone else and
i got positive feedback that they would be able to help me so don't take the first no as like
it's not going to happen it will you just have to go out and look for someone else how do you find
a mentor so one of the ways that you could look for your mentor and this is how i found my mentor
is through academia so if you went to school if you finish your education at the province
in which you plan to get licensed then you can look into the professors and the connections
that you already have so you might have already worked with a professor taken a course from one
of the professors who are licensed so if they are licensed then they can become your mentor
now if you didn't go to school in the province in which you plan to get your license and you
don't have any connections with any of the local universities then you may want to get involved in
the community and look at local community events where you can get involved it's like for example
in Toronto there's a society of architects where you can get involved and there's always
events going on social events and so on where you can get connected with other architects and that
could be a great way to build some connections with architects that are licensed and then you can
bring it up and just ask them to be your mentor now your mentor can also be a previous employer
in which you worked with and you can ask them to be your mentor as well or it could be a previous
intern and they could then become your mentor as long as of course they're licensed or
they were licensed like a retired architect so your supervising architect is different from
your mentor your supervising architect needs to be at your workplace where you're currently
employed the idea with the supervising architect is they're going to be checking in with you on
a regular basis honestly on a day-to-day basis your supervising architect needs to be licensed
in the jurisdiction that you are working in for example i'm in Ontario my supervising architect
was a licensed architect in Ontario so that is one of the requirements and they cannot be retired so
for the mentor they could be a retired architect but for your supervising architect they can't be
retired they have to be practicing because you're working with them on a day-to-day basis so the
supervising architect plays an important role as well in your CERB so when you are filling
in and logging in your hours the first person to review your hours is your supervising architect
and they're going to provide you comments in your log so here we have the old CERB
which is of the form so now in Ontario at least you can actually log in your hours online and it
used to be that we had to do it through the form and then mail it to for example the OAA so here we
have the CERB experience summary and this is where you would enter your intern identification and
then your employer information and then the period of which you're logging from now if you guys are
interested in getting more detailed information on how i logged my hours and how i keep track of them
then let me know in the comments down below if that's something that would be useful for you guys
so then this is where you would include your projects and the specific activities that
you did for that particular project for that particular category so for example
programming site analysis and so on you would describe your activities for that particular
category so basically you're explaining what you did under for example code research
in that project and so and so on and then you have a summary page of the work now this is where the
supervising architect from the place and where you're working at your employer would fill out
and make comments so they're going to comment on the level of responsibility and involvement
requested from the intern and relative level taken and performed by the intern they're also
going to comment on the overall attitude and philosophy and professional goals of the intern
and they're also going to give you some recommendations for the next six years that
they would like to see from you and they will also comment and extend uh to which the intern has
been exposed to the activities so they're gonna provide those comments so they play an important
role in filling out your CERB and then they're gonna sign and print their name and date it
now in the old system the mentor as you can see here only looks at the comments that
the supervising architect does and they'll kind of you can talk uh to them and talk about so far your
experience and you can get some guidance from them as well and then they would sign your log
and then they would sign your CERB and that's about it in the online system there is the
option for the mentor to add some comments and so on which is i think a nice addition
so that's basically what the supervising architect does in the CERB now how do you find
your supervising architect this one's a bit easier it's the architect you're working with on a day to
day basis so finding your supervising architect is simple and if you do move practices you can
switch your supervising architect as well if you need more information about the internship
program how to become an intern architect and how to get started then i would check out my other
video that i've actually put together on how to become an intern architect and how to get
started so if you guys are interested in that you could check out in the description box i've
included a link down below and also i have a few other videos that might be helpful for you guys
if you guys enjoyed the video make sure to like and of course if you want to see more
content make sure to subscribe as well i hope to see you guys on future videos until then bye