Currently, mentors and learners are differentiated by category and the particular template used to build their profile. Presently, all of these profiles currently are placed under Wikipedia:Co-op/(username).
Looking ahead, @Soni and I have been thinking it would be better to separate these profiles out into WP:Co-op/Learners/(username) and WP:Co-op/Mentors/(username), not unlike how the Teahouse manages profiles with Guests and Hosts. I think we had envisioned separating profiles into different places at first, but perhaps it was easier to put them all in one place?
In any case, I think separating them out has two important benefits. First, it makes it easier for a learner to become a mentor. Right now (if I'm not mistaken), this process would require that a learner ask for an admin to delete their page, wait for it to be deleted, and then recreate it as a new mentor profile. By separating them out, a learner can simply stop requesting mentors and make a mentor profile right away.
Second (and this is more complicated) is that this change seems like a necessary step toward building a workable system of rotation for the front page profile cards, not unlike how the Teahouse rotates its featured host and featured guest. Currently, we have lists of featured learners and featured mentors for which I have created profile cards manually, and that I have to update manually on the front page. The actual rotation is something we can focus on later, but there should be a page of profile cards for mentors (i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Co-op/Mentors) and for learners (i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Co-op/Mentors) that we can draw upon. Is it possible for HostBot to generate these cards automatically when new profiles are created? All that is required, once the profile is created, is to add "front" to the end of the template. For example:
{{Wikipedia:Co-op/Learner_profile|username=Jtmorgan| ... }}becomes the following for a profile card:
{{Wikipedia:Co-op/Learner_profile_front|username=Jtmorgan| ... }}