College and Community Mentoring Connection

Visit the Cabrini Blog at http://cabriniblog.blogspot.com/ and see how graduate students from Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin are connecting this week with 7th to 12th grade inner city students from Chicago.

This is the 7th consecutive year that Edgewood College and Cabrini-Connections students are connecting for a summer workshop. All of the planning, including the work of graduate students to scrounge around for "incentives" like gym shoes donated by a big shoe company. These were the motivation that encouraged the CC students to show up each day at 8am. Hopefully the lessons and relationships will lead to better preparation for school this school year, and in a few years, better preparation to attend college.

Visit the blog and read what some of the CC and Edgewood students are saying about this week's collaboration.

This is the type of college/community collaboration that could be happening all over the country, connecting students, faculty and alumni of big and small universities with tutor/mentor programs in big cities like Chicago.

We know that many colleges already do programs like this with individual youth serving organizations and schools. Our aim is to encourage organizers to look at the T/MC Map Gallery at http://webpages.charter.net/jcory17/geotech/tmc_directory.html and think of ways that they could reach more than one programs within a big city.

In the T/MC Forum is a discussion of how students from Graduate Business Schools can take a lead in such strategies.

As we head into the coming school year, I hope readers will share this information and encourage more university people to get involved with the Tutor/Mentor Connection.