Resources for Mentors
Most of us can think of people in our lives, more experienced than ourselves, who taught us something new, offered advice, presented a challenge, initiated a friendship, or simply expressed an interest in our development as a person. These people were mentors. They helped us negotiate an uphill path or find an entirely new path to a goal in our academic, career, or personal lives. They showed us a world larger than our neighborhood. They pointed out talents that we hadn’t noticed in ourselves and stimulated ideas about what we might be able to accomplish. They nudged us when we needed a nudge.
At Berkeley Community Scholars (BCS), we match each High Hopes Scholar with an adult who will be the scholar’s mentor for four years, as the scholar pursues his or her college degree. Often, our scholars do not have another adult in their lives who can play this role. Many of our scholars are the first in their family to seek higher education. Others are entering college without family or community support. Whatever the reason, our mentors play a vital role in the success of our scholars.
To help you in that role, we recommend the following resources:
BCS-Specific Resources
BCS Mentor Financial Aid Questions
General Resources
Articles
- Mentoring Across Cultures (Academe, 2007)
Student Experiences
- Conquering the Freshman Fear of Failure (The New York Times, 2016)
- Don’t Quit on Me: What Young People Who Left School Say About the Power of Relationships. America’s Promise Alliance, BU School of Education (2015)
- Who Gets To Graduate? (The New York Times Magazine, 2014)
- What It’s Like to be the First Person in Your Family to Go to College (The Atlantic, 2014)
- First-Generation Students Unite (The New York Times, 2015)
- The Struggle to Be First: First-Gen Students May Be Torn Between College and Home (California Magazine, Spring 2015)
- What I Remember About Orientation as a Low-Income, First-Generation Student (Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 2019)
- Classroom Time Isn’t the Only Thing Students Have Lost (The Atlantic, 2021)
- COVID-Era College: Are Students Satisfied? (Inside Higher Ed, 2021)
- The Lies We’re Sold about the ‘College Experience.’ (Vox, 2021)
Higher Education Landscape
- For the Poor, the Graduation Gap Is Even Wider than the Enrollment Gap (The New York Times, 2015)
- What the Privileged Poor Can Teach Us (The New York Times, 2015)
- Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States (The Pell Institute for the Study Opportunity in Higher Education, 2019)
- Towards a Critical Race Theory of Higher Education (Urban Education, 2016)