Mission
To link university students, community, and business mentors with youth to provide educational and career exploration opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom.
Goals
- Provide a model mentoring program and career resource clearinghouse for Michigan;
- Provide academic support for children and tackle the growing achievement gaps;
- Provide career exploration opportunities for children with emphasis on science, math, engineering, health, and technology (SMETH) careers;
- Provide children, parents, guardians and K–12 staff information about post–high school job training and higher educational opportunities.
Beliefs, Objectives & Rationale
Foundational MRO Beliefs:
- Mentoring is a long-term journey requiring perseverance;
- Mentors do not try to produce a “mini-me”;
- Mentoring focuses on changing people from the inside, not on the outside;
- Mentoring relationships have profound effects on both partners.
Our fundamental mentoring strategy is that both partners develop competence and character by ...
- Discovering their gifts, talents, and passions;
- Dealing with their personal pain and life struggles;
- Becoming effective problem-solvers; and
- Determining short- and long-term life goals.
Our objectives particularly aimed at the children and teens we serve:
- To provide youth with long-term academic mentoring to promote literacy and academic success.
- To provide youth with career mentors and career exploration programs to enable them to learn about their skills and passions and to define personal career goals.
- To provide youth with a range of opportunities and resources to explore their post–high school options including but not limited to: technical and apprenticeship training, community college programs and associate degrees, four-year college/university degrees, professional degrees, and military programs. Our focus remains on science, math, engineering, technology, and health (SMETH) careers.
Rationale for strategies and objectives:
Mentoring—and nothing else—is the answer to unfilled needs that are holding our children back.
- Affective issues vitally impact academic achievement: student views of their own abilities, the responsibility they take on for their own lives and futures, their aspirations, and their network of support when they need help.
- Attention to motivation through career exploration can improve student willingness to expend the effort required to master difficult, technical subjects.
- The consistent emphasis on relationship and multifaceted interventions can be as powerful as highly qualified teachers and rigorous curriculum in furthering academic achievement.
- Encouragement and reinforcement of parents and extended family in their support of children’s learning and aspirations can make a critical difference in significantly changing the cycle that has hindered the advancement in science and math education for many years.
Last updated 28 Oct 07