New Mentorship Program AIMS to Build Community Among Male Students

Arcadia University's Division of Campus Life is launching the first iteration of Achievement Initiatives for Male Success (AIMS), a mentorship program for male students, with an emphasis on students of color on campus, with a kickoff dinner and information session on Tuesday, Oct. 1, at 5 p.m. in the Castle Dining Room.

Led by Vice President of Campus Life and Dean of Students Dr. Donavan McCargo and Assistant Director of Counseling/Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives Eugene Garmon, MS, the program seeks to empower and support students by guiding their personal and professional development through group dialogue, scholarship, networking, and leadership opportunities.

The group's biweekly meetings will be led by Dr. McCargo and Garmon. The meetings will center around building community, creating a space students want to be a part of, and enhancing the student experience on campus.

Dr. Keisha Robinson, mentorship director for the Social Action and Justice Education (SAJE) fellowship program, and Shaliyah Braxton, senior associate director of undergraduate admissions and Access, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (AEDI), joined AIMS to support this fall's programming as well as plan an equivalent program dedicated to female BIPOC students, which will launch this spring. The AIMS Program, which began at another institution with support and leadership from Dr. McCargo is poised for expansion at Arcadia University, and other institutions seeking to provide a supportive environment for male students in college to thrive.

Anyone interested in participating can reach out to Dr. McCargo ([email protected]) or Garmon ([email protected]) for more information. Garmon will also be available during Arcadia's Wellness Fair on Oct. 4 to speak more about the program. Below, he talks more about what AIMS is, and where it's going.

Q: Could you tell me about the AIMS program and where it stands currently?

A: As of right now, we're looking at a kickoff date of October 1st. We have a graduate-level intern who will be with us for the fall semester and hopefully for the spring semester, and he'll be helping to coordinate the program and get it up and running. We have him responsible for recruiting students as of right now.

This is for the students, so we gotta figure out ways and creative ways to recruit those who will need our service. Right now I'm looking at a minimum number of 10 male students. Obviously, we want to grow from 10 to 20 to 40 to whatever capacity we can hold. But as of right now, we can at least recruit 10 and have those 10 really engage and be consistent with the program. Then we can kind of utilize them somewhat like a cohort that works with AIMS. They can range from first-year students, and first-gen students, to sophomores to juniors to seniors.

So, what I've noticed is that there was like a drop-off right between sophomore year and junior year, especially for our male students of color.

Now, AIMS will be open to everybody, but when we started looking at why is there a drop-off for our young men of color here on this campus between sophomore and junior years and the rates for the drop-off between freshman and sophomore years, they weren't like a big statistic, but it was still something that was concerning.

So, what goes into someone not wanting to A) complete their education, and then B) why would you want to transfer from here? That's sort of where AIMS came from. We thought, "All right, let's build community. Let's build experience. Let's build young leaders. Let's, let's, you know, build mentorship to hopefully help bridge that gap."

Now we'll be able to collaborate and meet and talk about what's going on outside of academics, and what's going on within the academic world here for the student. Then we know what areas to address and how we should address them. Hopefully, our initiatives help them move forward through their processes of becoming ultimately college grads.

Q: What will the kickoff on Oct. 1 look like?

A: We'll have dinner. The meeting starts at about 5 p.m., and then during that initial meeting, it would be us getting to know you, you know getting to know the program, getting to know me and Dr. McCargo, getting to know our graduate intern, and just basically all the beginning phases of forming a bond and an understanding of, okay, this is what AIMS is and what AIMS is aiming to do.

Q: What other programming do you have planned?

A: We'll have biweekly meetings. There will be social events, we'll have guest speakers at least once a month, and we'll also go on trips for experiences. We're looking to do sporting events. We're looking to do museums. We're looking to do restaurants, anything that helps stretch the student outside of their norm to show them different experiences and to show them how you can improve your quality of life through grounding and quality education.

Q: Who is the AIMS program open to?

A: Actually, it's open to all. We want to prioritize our male students of color but we don't want anyone to feel like they should be excluded. So, if you want to come and join AIMS, come and join AIMS. You know, you could be a student that's struggling, that's struggling between that sophomore to junior year. You may need that community to help give you that extra push or that extra boost to get you to where you need to be next. So I didn't want to be only focusing on male students of color. Right? I wanted to focus on all males. I want to focus on everybody who may need the help. Everybody who may need that extra boost should be able to come in and openly enjoy what we're doing with AIMS.

Q: How does recruitment work? How can students get involved?

A: Our graduate-level intern has been active in reaching out to the community, speaking to different students and asking them what would they need, and then kind of informing them about the program. We'll also have a flyer campaign. There's also a wellness fair going on October 4th which would be three days after our kickoff date, but that's fine because then we can still utilize the platform to go ahead and say, "This is our next meeting date. Come on out and check out AIMS and see what AIMS is all about."

Q: What factors play a role in the importance of this program?

A: The student experience is paramount. And actually, retention and student experience go hand in hand. So, if we can provide a great student experience, as in, "I joined AIMS and I enjoyed the guest speakers. I enjoyed the trips we took. I enjoyed the community." That's very important and it plays hand in hand with retention. So if you're enjoying and being a part of AIMS, then obviously we'll likely retain you as a student as part of our program. So if you come in year one, we want you not only in the fall but also in the spring. Then we will hopefully get you back for a second year and we can hopefully get you back for a third year.

Then there are our prospective students as well. Our current students can also provide mentorship to prospective students who are thinking about coming to Arcadia or who have already decided to commit to coming to Arcadia so that way we can also form a bond and build a bridge for them as well.

So I think the student experience is paramount to everything because that's the heart. That's the meat of everything, to have them come in and enjoy and know why they're there. And then followed up by, "Okay, I know why I'm here now. I'm really enjoying that. I am here and I'm so glad I did take part in AIMS and I got something out of it."

Q: What else should students know about the program?

A: We love consistency and also just want you to be bringing ideas to the table. You know, what would you want to see out of AIMS? It's not about what I think or what I feel as though it should be. True, I'll help craft and piece together the program, but we want student engagement. We want your ideas. We want your input. We want to know if you don't like something or if something isn't successful for you. Let's take it in. Let's think about it. Let's move forward with it. Or on the other side of things like, "Hey, it would be a great idea if we traveled to this place or had this experience." Great. Bring it to the table. Let's talk about it.

One disclaimer I definitely wanted to make was that our meetings aren't a therapeutic group. It's just a meeting to come together and discuss topics that we have in-house at AIMS as each meeting goes on. Every time we meet, it might not be a meeting. It may be a guest speaker visit or we'll go out to have an experience. But at this first one, we'll kind of lay the groundwork.

Q: What are some of your main hopes for the future of this program?

A: I want to grow the mentorship and partnering with local businesses, and local community leaders, having guest speakers come out and the weight of the guest speaker may range from someone local to maybe even someone national at some point. A lot of our trips will be local, but maybe we do something national at some point.

I also hope we can double the minimum number of students from 10 to 20 within the next year or two, and then we'll have 20 solid and consistent students who participate in the program. Also the mentorship piece I think is very important because then a first-year student could have an upperclassman to connect with in the program. We'd also love to have faculty engagement to have them be a part of AIMS. For our graduate students, we might even try to get out and advertise for them to join AIMS as a mentorship piece in-house to work with our undergraduates, so that we form bonds, we form bridges.

AIMS is about bonding. AIMS is about community. AIMS is about progression. Not only retention, but also progression. And the best way to have progress is if we foster a healthy community. So if I'm a student who's struggling and I'm thinking about dropping out of school or transferring, we want to assure you that you have a community that you'll be able to reach out to, and that will reach out to you to help you through whatever those struggles are to get you to the ultimate goal of graduating.