Mentoring helps students find way

In one program, more than 400 Penn minority students get advice from older peers. When United Minorities Council Chairperson Charles Howard came to Penn three years ago, upperclassmen role models helped him adjust to University life and spurred him on to do better in school. "[Black Student League President] Terrence Whitehead was my mentor since high school, and if it wasn't for him I might not even be at Penn," Howard said. "He's always been the one kicking me in the butt to make sure that I stayed focused." Today, Howard, a College junior, serves as a mentor in a program to set minority students up with peer and faculty support as soon as they begin at Penn. Howard said he tries to help freshmen just like he was helped. The Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Center also has a similar program for students. The minority mentoring program -- which was started in 1988 and is run out of the Department of Academic Support Programs -- uses upperclassmen, Medical School students, Law School students and faculty members to provide a support system for the students. Initially, the program was only for freshmen minority students, but in 1993 the pre-professional portions of the program began. Undergraduate pre-med and pre-law students are paired with students in Penn's Law or Medical schools, who act as peer-advisors. The program's leaders get a list of all incoming students who are members of minority groups. They then send out letters during the spring and summer inviting the students to participate in the program, according to Sharon Smith, an associate director in Academic Services and the program's director. Mentors and mentees can also sign up for the program through the department's World Wide Web site, Smith said. All students who sign up are assigned a peer mentor. In addition, Smith noted that some randomly-chosen students are assigned faculty advisors, who are limited in number. Students in the program also have the faculty and peer advisors provided to all students by their undergraduate schools. Howard mentored College sophomore Jean Tuffet last year, and Tuffet says that it has helped shape his college career. "My relationship with [Howard] has grown beyond mentor-mentee," Tuffet said. "This doesn't normally happen, but he became more than someone who told me what classes were good and where to eat. He's now family to me." Tuffet also now serves as a mentor in the program. But the incoming students aren't the only ones who learn from the process. Mentors must go through a three-hour training session on how to build relationships with their mentees and how to help them in different scenarios, Smith said. "The program is more about relationship building than academic advising," Smith explained, though students are matched with mentors who have similar ethnicity, academic majors and interests. She added that the relationship between mentor and mentee varies person to person. Some mentors remain friends with their mentees until they graduate, while others are helpful just for the first year, and then the students never see each other again. To help build successful relationships, Smith and her staff plan cultural and social events for the students. Previous events have included Cosmic Bowling and a multi-cultural social. In addition, the program regularly sends out e-mail messages telling students about cultural events around the city and in the Annenberg Center. Mentors are encouraged to get together with their mentees to attend as many events as possible, Smith said. The program currently enrolls 400 students, but only 220 mentors, Smith said. She said that this is not due to the lack of interest in the program, just a lack of time on the part of students and faculty. Smith explained that some students and faculty mentors will join the program one year and then take another year off, so that the numbers remain constant from year to year. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual students also have a program that they can go to for mentoring. According to Program Coordinator Juan Perez, the LGBC's program seeks to provide all students who are unsure of their sexuality -- including upperclassmen -- with someone they can go to with their problems. The center didn't model their program on the one run by Smith, but they consulted with her before starting their program, he said. "The program grew out of the need for students to have positive support," Perez said. "It's more of a peer support type system." The LGBC's program works differently than the minority mentoring program in that students are not actively recruited for the LGBC program. "[Students] don't always feel comfortable with other people knowing their sexuality," Perez explained. "With a program like ours, confidentiality becomes a greater issue." Instead, students sign up to be mentors or mentees through the center's Web site. "As requests come in, students are connected," Perez said. For reasons of confidentiality, Perez explained that it would be impossible to plan social events for the mentors and mentees to get better acquainted or to send out letters to prospective students. "Programs like that just wouldn't work out," he said. Volunteers who signed up to be mentors last spring were trained in issues relevant to lesbian, gay and bisexual students, Perez added. The volunteers were given training on University policy concerning gays, lesbians and bisexuals. They were also given a list of on-campus support programs, reading material and phone numbers similar to the ones that resident advisors and peer advisors are given, Perez said. This year only two students have signed up for the program, which Perez attributes to the fact that word has not gotten around that the program exists, and many students are still concerned about issues of confidentiality. He explained that as word spreads, he expects that the number of mentored and volunteer mentors will increase.

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