The Island Scholars Mentor Program

Overview: Since September of 2008, Benjamin Odgren has served as the Island Scholars Network Coordinator for the Island Institute. This was a brand new position, serving with and expanding on the scholarship program, to help students stay in touch with each other and to give them a support network during their freshman year of college.

Challenges: Like any program getting off its feet, the mentor program met its share of difficulties. One of the goals of the mentor program was to get a lot of face-to-face time with the students. We wanted to meet with the Dean of Students at local colleges so they could meet the freshman islanders and their upperclassman mentors. The concentration of island students last year and this year, however, is actually spread all over New England (and beyond). Since there is almost no overlap between students, this would make trying to organize something like this a futile effort. It would be a large amount of travel and planning for a very small percentage of our island scholars.

Figuring it out: One of the early endeavors of the mentor program was to go to different islands and meet with the school guidance counselors. This was just to meet them, but also to see if there was anything specific that the Island Institute could offer by way of information about careers, college, and anything else a student pursuing higher education could ask for.

This resulted in the development of an hour long presentation about writing essays for college scholarships. This information was presented at several schools, and was a good indication of what worked, what didn't, what needs to be changed, and how the lecture format could be used to talk about careers to younger grade levels at younger schools.

What worked: One of the original goals of the program was to publish a set of bi-monthly newsletters to give to students and parents. This was a big success from the very start of the program. Many topics have been covered, ranging from dealing with final exams to articles about what college graduates from the islands have done after their college career is over. The newsletters are something that will remain a staple of the mentor program, and will hopefully be expanded to high school students in the year to come.

A new approach: Utilizing the scholarship section of the website, as well as the newsletters, we will have upperclassmen who volunteered to be mentors to instead write articles about their college experience. These articles would be put in the newsletter, and would also be used to update the website at least once every two weeks in hopes that it would give them something to keep coming back to the website for. This will also allow parents, teachers, high school students, and anybody else who is interested, to read the articles if they wish.