Peer-Mentoring Programs Responding to the Needs of Students
COMPASS and Lighthouse shared as models for student success at Associated Colleges of Illinois’s annual public forum
CHICAGO (December 10, 2014) — In recent years, North Park University’s peer-mentoring programs, COMPASS and Lighthouse, have served as models for student success among area colleges and universities. In collaboration with the Associated Colleges of Illinois (ACI), North Park joined two additional higher education institutions in building a “relationship bridge” between low-income, minority, and first-generation college students, the campus community, and the college’s social, academic, financial, and multicultural support services, with goals of college readiness and completion.
On Tuesday at ACI’s annual public forum at the Union League Club of Chicago, representatives from North Park University, including University President Dr. David L. Parkyn, Director of Student Success Dr. Barrington Price, and two students from the mentor program, junior Tatianna Hughlett and freshman Devin Childress, shared details about the programs and the impact they are making on the lives of students to an audience of community and higher education leaders.
For more than 10 years, North Park’s COMPASS program has brought select students to campus 10 days before orientation to prepare them for the academic and social challenges of college and adjust to life on campus. Students participate in mini-classes in the sciences and English, and form small cohort groups led by upperclassmen mentors that provide support throughout the year. This past summer, students studied toxicity levels in the Chicago River, read a book about the river’s history, met the book’s author, and participated in environmental service projects. In addition, over the course of the year students take a class in foundations for academic success and then a class in career planning, helping to identify a major and career path early in their journey.
“We focus on identifying student needs, helping them understand who they are, what their skills, interests, and abilities are, and find social and academic opportunities that lead toward students feeling a fit at the University,” said Price. “We work with many students who operate under the premise that they can’t do something, so a lot of our work involves restructuring that premise.”
Hughlett, who began her freshman year at North Park as a mentee in the program, now serves as a mentor to incoming freshmen. “Growing up I didn't have the best role models around me,” she told the audience. “I didn't have people telling me that I could be more successful. After participating in the mentor program, I have so many faculty and staff members who believe in me and push me to go the distance.” Hughlett is now considering graduate school after graduation in 2015.
“At the colleges and universities of the Associated Colleges of Illinois, we feel an obligation and a deep responsibility to open the doors to higher education and upward mobility,” said Parkyn. “At North Park University, we are especially proud of our peer-mentoring programs, and the talented and dedicated students who are nurturing one another as they progress toward success.”
North Park is one of 23 institutions that together form ACI, a network of private, nonprofit, residential colleges and universities that works with business and community leaders to design and implement programs to help underserved students prepare for and successfully graduate from college.
Nearly 79 percent of mentored freshmen from 2013–2014 returned for their sophomore year this fall, higher than the 74 percent national retention average of all students, and significantly higher than the average retention rate of low-income, minority, and first-generation students. This fall, North Park welcomed its largest-ever COMPASS class of 54 students. In addition, North Park’s newer initiative, Lighthouse, reciprocates COMPASS with a smaller cohort of students over the entire four years of an undergraduate degree with the additional support of scholarship funding. The program will soon be graduating its first seniors with a retention rate above 90 percent, and this year’s freshman Lighthouse cohort also welcomed its largest-ever class of 15 students.
“North Park University’s mission claims that we prepare students for lives of significance and service, and these mentor programs reflect our commitment to student preparation,” said Dr. Jodi Koslow Martin, vice president for student engagement. “Students who are mentored become acclimated to college life by their peers so that they find both academic and social success during their first year, which will lead to discovering how they will live a life of significance and service after they graduate.” Koslow Martin added that the retention rate of students in North Park’s programs reflect that the programs, under the guidance of Barrington Price, are working. “It shows how students who receive personal attention from mentors can find a fit at North Park University.”
Price and colleague Pasi Musaindapo, career programs manager at North Park, have been asked to speak further about North Park’s mentor programs later this week at the Illinois ACT State Organization conference.
“What North Park is doing represents a real victory,” said Price. “It is an accomplishment that will have lasting impact on the lives of the students we serve, will change the face of the communities in which they live, and, ultimately, will strengthen our economy and our society.”
As North Park University freshman Devin Childress told the audience, “I can only go forward. I cannot go back."
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