Click on the link below to watch our PA eMentoring skit on the Smart Futures YouTube channel!

PA eMentoring Skit (YouTube Video)

UPMC employees partner with online mentoring program

Tuesday January 19, 2010

By Joe Symdo

Gina Monaco long had thought about becoming a mentor, but doubted she had the time and energy to do it.

When University of Pittsburgh Medical Center encouraged employees to begin mentoring high school students by e-mail, she jumped at the chance and quickly was paired with a local high school student interested in psychology.

“I signed up and didn’t give it a second thought,” said Ms. Monaco, who handles insurance reviews at UPMC’s Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.

UPMC’s endorsement of PA eMentoring is a big boost to Smart Futures, the Downtown nonprofit group that launched the program last school year. The partnership with UPMC was announced last week.

UPMC has 50,000 employees, giving the mentoring the program the potential to reach thousands of additional students across the state, Smart Futures executive director David Mosey said. Also, because the UPMC work force is so varied, it can offer students guidance on numerous career choices, including the skilled trades and technical fields.

Already, at least 100 UPMC employees have signed up. Ms. Monaco, who has a bachelor’s degree in child development and a master’s in psychology, said the goal with her student will be to “just open her eyes to the possibilities” of a psychology career.

Each week, the student and adult complete an online exercise designed to set the stage for a career-related discussion. Students participate for 10 weeks and finish the program with a personalized college and career plan.

By the end of the school year, Mr. Mosey said, he hopes to have reached more than 1,000 students in dozens of schools across the region. He said he hopes to have about 150 employers in his network by then.

Mr. Mosey said the program helps students understand “who they are, where they’re going and how to get there.” Partly because online mentoring is convenient, many of the mentors stay on for another 10-week cycle with another student.

“You’re talking about two e-mails a week,” Mr. Mosey said.

Smart Futures still is seeking college students, workers and retirees to serve as mentors. Prospective mentors can sign up at www.pa-ementor.org.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10019/1029242-298.stm?cmpid=news.xml#ixzz0d4blawNM

At CCAC. Left: Romy Banks of Smart Futures, Sumana Misra-Zets of CCAC, Jennifer Lundy of Smart Futures. Back: Rick Adams of CCAC

Wednesday, January 13, UPMC and PA eMentoring teamed up for a Day of Service. UPMC volunteers and Smart Futures staff spent the day recruiting PA eMentors at UPMC Shadyside Hospital, Bidwell Training Center, and Community College of Allegheny County.

We would like to thank everyone at the UPMC Center for Inclusion, Shdayside Hospital, Bidwell Training Center, and Community College of Allegheny County for making this day a success.

Inside Higher Education                 

 January 4, 2010

http://www.insidehighered.com/   

Many discussions of efforts to diversify the faculty ranks include concerns about whether female and minority academics need mentors. Advocates for female and minority professors say that white men are more likely to learn informally from senior (male) colleagues about how to get ahead. Some skeptics dismiss these ideas, and suggest that the best scholarship gets published and the best academics rise through the ranks.

Academics who have had good mentors have over the years praised their impact, and those without them have talked about falling behind. But is there proof that mentoring matters in launching faculty careers — and that it could make a difference for faculty diversity?

A study presented in Atlanta Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association may be the first truly random sample to try to test the mentor impact — and the study may demonstrate that mentoring truly does matter.

The research tracks the careers of women who participated (and some who were turned away from participating) in a mentoring program sponsored by the AEA’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economic Profession. The mentoring program connects junior female economists with senior faculty mentors for a two-day workshop held in conjunction with the economics association’s annual meeting. The workshops feature discussions about publishing and grant writing and offer critiques of a draft article or grant proposal. In the study, applicants to the program were randomly selected for participation or to be in the control group, and were told that there was not enough room in the program for all applicants.

Cohorts from 2004 and 2006 have now been tracked for five years and three years, respectively, and the study compares the female economists who received the mentoring and those who didn’t — women who were seen as otherwise having a similar range of abilities. Before participating (or not participating) in the study, those in the group receiving mentoring and in the control group showed no differences in the numbers of grants received or publications.

Comparing the participants and non-participants in the years since the mentoring took place, the study found significant gains for those who received mentoring in three key factors: total number of publications, total number of publications in “top tier” journals, and total number of federal grants won.

The study says that not enough time has passed to see if these achievements translate into higher rates of tenure and promotion. But the paper notes that, historically, the tenure rates for female economists have lagged those of men, and that publication and grants are key to receiving tenure. Some research, the paper says, suggests that mentoring may be particularly important in closing the gender gap in tenure rates. This research suggests that female economists lack the “research networks” of their male counterparts, and notes that even though co-authorship is common in the discipline, female economists are less likely to write pieces with colleagues than are men (even after controlling for publication rates).

— Scott Jaschik

January is “National Mentoring Month” and Smart Futures will be fully supporting and promoting the importance of mentoring as well as our own PA eMentoring program.

According to the National Mentoring Month Web site:

     “National Mentoring Month is the time each year when our nation spotlights     the importance of mentors and the need for every child to have a caring adult in his or her life. When you serve as a mentor, you enrich your own life as much as you do the life of a child. Become a mentor today!”

For more information about National Mentoring Month, go to:

http://www.nationalmentoringmonth.org/

http://www.mentoring.org/

Source: http://www.pittsburghregionalcompact.org/

From Both Sides: Real-world Mentoring Experiences
Told By Those Walking the Talk

Mentoring is a highly personal way for a professional to influence a young person’s life and his or her thinking regarding career awareness and exploration. Done online or in person, mentoring can offer much to not only the mentee, but the mentor as well.

If you’ve been thinking about becoming a mentor, this special feature with candid answers to questions about the experience, can help you determine whether e-mentoring or in-person mentoring is better for you.

Courtney Pack is a special events coordinator with the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC’s Medical and Health Sciences Foundation. She is an e-mentor with PA SmartFutures. Here’s what she had to say:

Describe why you chose the mentoring opportunity that you did.
It’s very important to give young adults the tools necessary to help build their futures.  For most high school students, choosing a career path and discovering the options after high school can be confusing and intimidating. I remember feeling that way. Speaking with a “professional” in a particular field gives a student personal experience and advice.  I chose to become an e-Mentor to help advise a student with post-high school options. The unique opportunity that PA e-mentoring provides allows both a professional and student to communicate in a safe environment and to participate in an online curriculum. This option was very convenient for me and for many students.

Define one mentoring challenge or obstacle that you’ve faced.  What did you do to overcome it?
A challenge that I faced as an e-mentor was being paired with a student interested in a career path that I was unfamiliar with.  It was difficult to speak from personal experience in that field, but I was still able to help the student discover what to look for in a college and how to gain extracurricular experience. I also contacted a friend who was in the career field that interested the student for advice.

Define one mentoring “mountaintop” moment.  What might you do to create more of these?
A “mountaintop” moment for me was one when a student e-mailed me to express appreciation for my detailed responses and for the options I provided that otherwise might not have been considered. We built a great personal and professional rapport online.

How do your gauge your success as a mentor?
As a mentor, I can only gauge my success on the feedback that I get from the students. Some students are more engaged than others. I hope that the advice I provided through our e-mail communications helped the students make the right decisions for their futures … or that they at least considered other options. It would be wonderful to track their success after the program.

How do you want your mentee to remember you?
I would like my mentee(s) to remember me as a helpful resource in selecting their career path.  Whether my advice helped them chose a college, program or career path, I am glad I was able to be a part of their decision. 

What is your time commitment to mentoring?  What’s your strategy for remaining loyal to that commitment and your mentee?
Just like everyone else, I am busy with work, family and other activities.  Participating as an e-mentor takes minimal time each week, literally minutes, to send an e-mail and complete an activity.  The program sends you reminders and tracks your activity status.  As a mentor, I am responsible to complete the activities and provide feedback in a timely manner.

What would you say to a potential mentor who needs some motivation to become engaged?
Anyone can become an e-mentor if he or she has access to the Internet and several minutes each week.  I think back to when I was in high school and was undecided about my future – especially since I was one of the first individuals in my family to attend college.  Having a program like PA e-Mentor would have been really helpful to me then. It allows students to consider their options especially around certain careers. As a professional in a career of interest to a student, I can conveniently participate in an online engagement that makes an impact on a young person’s life.

Web source: http://thegovmonitor.com/world_news/united_states/pennsylvania-prepares-youth-for-workplace-success-17583.html

Pennsylvania Prepares Youth For Workplace Success

Department of Labor & Industry Secretary Sandi Vito and Department of Education Secretary Gerald L. Zahorchak today discussed how to better prepare youth for success in the workplace by improving the state’s youth career development programs and services.

“To help Pennsylvania’s workforce recover from the national recession we must be dually focused on immediate solutions to get Pennsylvanians back to work, and on making that recovery sustainable by properly preparing our youth for the careers and economy of the future,” Vito said during a panel discussion at the Pennsylvania Youth Services Academy conference in Grantville.

“We have a unique, award-winning system of partnerships, service providers and workforce investment boards providing career education here in Pennsylvania,” Zahorchak said. “It’s critical that we continue to hold these discussions, develop innovative policies and explore strategic partnerships to keep building upon that success in the future.”

The conference, themed “Building for Recovery: Empowering Pennsylvania Youth,” runs through Dec. 2. It provides a forum to share best practices, develop solutions to workforce and education challenges and discuss the future of youth employment programs and services in Pennsylvania. Attendees include several Pennsylvania youth participants, along with representatives from Pennsylvania’s Regional Career Education Partnerships, or RCEPs, local workforce investment boards, youth services providers and other practitioners involved in youth workforce development across the state.

Pennsylvania already has several successful workforce development initiatives focused on youth. RCEPs were recently received the “State Excellence Award for Leadership” from the National Association of State Workforce Agencies for being an outstanding workforce-related program. Pennsylvania’s RCEPs connect businesses, education, and communities to prepare Pennsylvania’s future workforce. The 22 partnerships across the state provide more than 323,000 students better opportunities to gain the knowledge, skills and work-based learning critical for success in college and careers.

Pennsylvania’s Summer Youth Employment Program was a major focus of the conference. Feedback from this past summer, as well as recommendations for future programming, will be gathered during the conference for inclusion in a tool kit to be provided to participants at a later date.

For more information about the Pennsylvania Youth Services Academy, visit www.papartners.org.

On November 17, the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum hosted the “Gong Show” highlighting youth projects throughout Pittsburgh. The projects included presentations by Attack Theatre, BeatBots LLC, Pittsburgh Toonseum, Art Energy Design, and many others.

Among the projects, Smart Futures exhibited the opportunities of our PA eMentoring program for Pennsylvania students. In order to keep the creative mood flowing, David Mosey, Kristina Cenkner, and Romy Banks peformed a fun skit simulating the PA eMentoring experience between the teacher, mentor, and student.

With bangs of the gong, some laughs, and a few surprises, initiatives toward youth development took the spotlight. Many organizations are dedicated to providing educational services for Pittsburgh’s kids and the “Gong Show” displayed the variety of education available. Smart Futures was proud to participate in the event and be an example of youth development services Pittsburgh has to offer.

To see a photo slide show of the event go to:   http://www.popcitymedia.com/features/photokidscreativity120209.aspx

Dear Romy,

  We did it –not only did we reach 3,000 online pledges, we almost hit 5,000!  

  Congratulations to Smart Futures for receiving the highest number of online pledges and winning the UPMC Day-of-Service.  A further congratulations to Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania on their runner-up status, and to CCAC for their notable pledge contributions. And a big thanks to all of the community partners, pledge signers, and behind-the-scenes helpers for your commitment and support of the Dignity and Respect Campaign.  
 

      I’d also like to extend a special thanks to the folks at Leadership Pittsburgh  for their generosity in providing a half Day-of-Service to Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania, the runner-up in the pledge drive. Their commitment helps us as we continue to promote a workplace and community of dignity and respect.
 

                                                              — Dawnita Wilson

     Dignity and Respect Campaign Manager