DU STEM Mentor Partnership

CCESL has been instrumental in supporting the DU STEM Mentor Partnership since 2020. The Community-Engaged Teaching grant in 2023 – 2024 supported us to bring our partner school – Westminster High School (WHS) – to the DU campus for a day. WHS students and faculty met the DU STEM mentors in person and met faculty within the Colleges of NSM and ECS, and tour the Clinical Exercise Physiology, Human Dynamics, and Knoebel Institute for Healthy Aging labs – it was hard to tell which was the favorite because the students got to experience different aspects in each and they were full of interesting questions! Twenty-one WHS students were able to join for the day, and 6 of the DU STEM mentors showed them around campus and answered questions. The day was a great success for both the DU mentors and the WHS mentees in learning more about each other, supporting STEM interest, and showing the possibilities and potential of a DU college experience.

In addition to supporting this campus visit, the grant also supported our ability to present at the Oct 2024 University of New Mexico (UNM) Mentoring Institute on the benefits, opportunities, and challenges of our near-peer mentoring model. College students actively mentoring high school students in a year-long manner is a rare occurrence – in part because there are significant challenges to schedules, connections, and goals. At DU, we have been able to support a remote near-peer mentoring model for 5 years with our partner, Westminster High School. Our presentation at the UNM Mentoring Institute was enthusiastically received and new connections were formed to promote best practices in near-peer mentoring between college and high school programs. Without the financial support of CCESL, this conference presentation would not have been possible, and for that we are extremely grateful.