PART A - DESCRIPTION OF NEED OR OPPORTUNITY (REVISED)

In this Wicked Project an important educational goal that needs to be addressed is acquiring mentors for high school students transitioning into college.  This is an important fundamental need because many students are graduating from high school not knowing what they plan to do once they are out on there own.  This is the time when students become lost because they think that they know it all, but still have so much to learn about the real world. Many students are entering college and choosing a major based on their parent’s interest, or what career they believe will make them the most money, status, etc.  All of these are good reasons, but more than often these are not the same factors that keep students in there majors which lead them to changing there major later in college.  This prolongs there graduation and sometimes causes students to miss out on vital career opportunities had they decided earlier. 

Considering that  I do not have a classroom to start a student/mentor group, I plan on addressing this issue by taking a high school senior I know and pairing him up with a mentor to help guide him/her in their college choice and career. I want to group students with mentors in there field of study. I believe that the likelihood of students dropping out of college will be decreased if students have a mentor to guide them from freshmen to senior year. Mentors will also assist students with narrowing their focus to avoid being undecided, changing their major, and exhausting federal aide and/or parental support. This will also give them a good direction on if they need to change before it is too late and they end up stuck in a career they do not enjoy. Through this mentoring I would like to help jump start resumes and allow students to be one step ahead of other students that did not have an opportunity to intern, etc. The cost of this program is *Free*, all that’s needed is volunteers and committed educators, mentors, and students that are serious about making a change.

My scope to start this Project is to take a high school senior interested in electronics, audio, and computers and match him up with a current MSU employee that is in the Instructional Media Center to see if this is something he/she would like to possibly do.

Some relevant Online Mentoring Organizations
http://www.eduguide.org/ EduGuide: people who are passionate about pursuing their potential and finds joy in helping others reach theirs too. EduGuides live to share what they’re learning and to help others discover new ways to succeed

Icouldbe.org's online mentoring programs reach young people who do not have access to quality educational resources, using a learning environment to connect them to mentors who offer practical and individualized advice, information and expertise.

iMentor is a New York City-based youth mentoring organization that uses guided email communication to enhance in-person youth mentoring, and continues to leverage lessons learned to help other groups start up their own mentoring programs. The organization effectively uses technology to add flexibility and structure in its mentoring program, engaging professionals as mentors and mentees from some of the most economically and geographically isolated communities.

The Electronic Emissary is a web-based service and resource center that helps teachers and students with Internet connections locate mentors who are experts in various disciplines, and then plan and engage in curriculum-based learning. In this way, the interaction that occurs among teachers and students face-to-face in the classroom is supplemented and extended by email, online forums, chats, and audio and video conferencing among participating teachers, students, and volunteer mentors.

MentorNet is dedicated to diversifying the engineering and scientific workforce by providing e-mentoring to women and underrepresented minorities in colleges and universities. Arguing that engineering and science are the engines of progress and economic development it grew out of a pilot online mentoring program at the Dartmouth School of Engineering and now partners with more than 100 universities.

GEM-SET is one branch of pre-college mentoring provided by the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program at the University of Illinois at Chicago that links volunteer women mentors in the fields of science, engineering, and technology to student members from across the U.S. More than 1,300 young girls ages 13 to 18 years old and 200 mentors in graduate school and beyond have participated via online mentoring and face-to-face programming where available.

Horsesmouth, a relatively new online mentoring organization, was formed as a place where personal contributions create public value. It is purposeful social networking, a so-called "wisdomocracy" for adults which consists of an online social network for informal online mentoring on a wide range of topics within the three broad categories of life, work and learning. The general philosophy of Horsesmouth is stated as that if "you've lived, you've learned."

Although they are embedded within traditional university programs and blend teaching, tutoring and mentoring, the following three universities are interesting to note because of their online mentoring components.

UCLA Extension Writers' Program is a good example of how online mentoring and tutoring cross over. As America's largest continuing education provider of online creative writing and screenwriting courses and services, it offers individualized feedback and mentoring to thousands of aspiring and practicing writers worldwide.

These are all online mentoring programs that focus on careful recruitment, training, and evaluation of mentors.  All these programs are at the forefront of virtual learning environments and online learning to connecting classroom programs, bringing students together with mentors to explore real life advice, experiences, and training.

A plan I will implement during this course is putting together a survey of students interested in having a mentor, and for students to give there expectations of what they will do to contribute to their own success of being connected with a mentor. Students will have the opportunity to indicate  what role they think a mentor should play in there success, and to follow the student throughout this course to see if having this MSU professional as his mentor gives him a better focus on what he would like his major to be upon entering college.

A plan I will implement after the completion of this course will be to take all surveys and connect students with mentors through one of the above online programs. I would also like to monitor these students for as long as they feel they need their mentor, or upon college graduation.

The success of the program will be from the students that are successfully entering there field with confidence.  Through the mentoring program I would like to see a significant increase in students decision making skills and there ability to handle school and real life situations.