Electronic mentoring via the Internet has been shown to be a convenient way to connect larger numbers of students with prospective mentors. Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of Internet-based mentoring programs targeting high school girls in science and technology, linking them with corporate mentors and role models to encourage and sustain their interests in science and technology-based fields. There are clearly pros and cons to mentoring via the Internet. On the plus side, electronic mentoring:

	Gives students access to the expertise of specialists in various fields of interests.
	Provides mentors with immediate access to students' work.
	Increases opportunities for students to express their ideas and receive feedback.
	Is place independent - providing access and collaboration with experts, regardless of the geographical location.

On the minus side, protégé and mentor have less of an opportunity to establish a one-on-one rapport that is often the very heart of a successful mentoring relationship, as well as being essential to sustaining it over time.

One of the most widely respected of the e-mentoring programs is Mentornet, an award-winning nonprofit e-mentoring network that addresses the retention and success of women in engineering, science and mathematics. Founded in 1997, MentorNet provides highly motivated protégés from many of the world's top colleges and universities with positive, one-on-one, email-based mentoring relationships with mentors from industry and academia.

Another is Telementoring, a three-year project that draws on the strengths of telecommunications technology to build on-line communities of support among female high school students, professional women in technical fields, parents, and teachers. ASME's eMentoring program is available to all ASME members with 5 years or less work experience in the engineering field.

In the words of a mentor with MentorNet, "E-mentors are perfectly suited to help students work through [career] decisions and to explore issues of work-life balance; issues which are coming to the forefront for women in their mid-late 20s (or beyond), who are just about to enter the workforce."