Program Overview

The Dr. Harley E. Flack Student Mentoring Program at Rowan University is an academic success and retention program which provides participants academic, personal, and professional support throughout the course of their undergraduate career at Rowan.  Through personalized mentorship, academic support, professional guidance, co-curricular activities, and leadership initiatives, the program has successfully supported participants in achieving their goals and full potential as students at Rowan University.

• Mission
• History
• Objectives
• Learning Outcomes

Mission

The Dr. Harley E. Flack Student Mentoring Program aims to improve the academic and professional success, retention rates, and graduation rates of active program participants. The program's focus is to enhance students’ overall university experience; support students in developing core academic, personal, professional and cultural skills; and foster in students some core civic and leadership proficiencies that will serve them personally and professionally.

History

The Dr. Harley E. Flack Student Mentoring Program was established in 1992.  In creating the program, Dr. Flack, then the Executive Vice President/Provost, intended to address concerns that student satisfaction, retention and graduation rates of African American males were disproportionately low compared to similar statistics for their counterparts.  In collaboration with a cohort of dedicated faculty and staff members, Dr. Ted Johnson and Dr. Kimble Byrd officially created and coordinated the Dr. Harley E. Flack Male Student Mentoring program. 

As the population of Latino males matriculating at the university increased, similar concern as was expressed for their African American counterparts began to surface.  With this, the program opened its membership to Latino males. 

In the meanwhile, African American women seeking mentorship initially approached the male mentors for support.  With the persistence of Ms. Zarinah Knight (a student leader) and under the leadership of its first coordinator, Dr. Diane Hughes, the female component to the program – now named Ujima (a Swahili term meaning “collective responsibility”) – was established in the spring of 1995.  By the spring of 1996 Dr. Shirley Muller assumed coordination of the female component of the program and it was further developed under her guidance.  

Responding to the challenges that working class and first generation students faced, which are similar to the challenges faced by African American and Latina/o students, in 1996 the program grew further to open membership to all under-represented or underprepared students. 

With the support of President Farish, Dr. Carmen Jordan Cox, and Mr. James Gaymon, the university formally institutionalized the program in the fall of 2008 with the hiring of a fulltime Assistant Director of Mentoring and Academic Enrichment. 

Over the years, Ujima and the male component of the Harley E. Flack Student Mentoring program have been very successful in supporting Rowan University students from their first year to graduation.

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Objectives 

Through mentoring relationships, academic support, and cultural enrichment activities the Dr. Harley E. Flack Student Mentoring Program will fulfill the following objectives:

• Provide first-year students opportunities to connect with peers one-on-one and in groups.
• Educate participants on their roles and responsibilities at the university as well as on opportunities available to them.
• Train participants in developing clear personal and professional goals and a path toward these goals.
• Provide participants opportunities for academic, personal and professional growth and excellence. 
• Provide participants with opportunities to engage in service and/or service learning.
• Provide participants with guidance in the pursuit of their degrees.
• Train participants on being peer-mentors and on leadership
• Offer participants leadership opportunities that are pertinent to their professional development.
• Offer juniors and seniors career guidance and advice through mentoring relationships with university faculty and staff.
• Challenge seniors to become aware of and develop the qualities of good leaders.

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Learning Outcomes

• Program participants who complete Peer-Mentor Training will serve as Peer-Mentors and will practice learned mentoring skills by effectively mentoring freshmen as demonstrated on completed Mentoring Meeting Logs.

• Program participants who attend the "Speak and Eat" Conversation Series will demonstrate their understanding of the importance of making healthy/safe choices as demonstrated on a post-conversations surveys.
  
  
• Program participants who attend the Academic Skills Workshop Series will demonstrate understanding and importance of academic skills respective to the workshop attended as demonstrated on a post-workshop survey.

• Program participants selected based on leadership potential who serve as Undergraduate Coordinators will receive guidance and support to practice leadership skills by assisting with monitoring peer-mentoring interactions, data collection and execution of programmatic events and activities during their year of service.
  
• Program participants who engage in one or more program-sponsored service projects will demonstrate greater appreciation and understanding of the importance of service-learning to their overall educational and professional experience as demonstrated on a Post-Service Project Survey.

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