Sense of Community
Schools that have students who particiated in the EMERGE program have seen improvement in attitude, student interest, and improved grades. The EMERGE program also brings a sense of community to the students who are involved. This is very important especially for young women who are trying to bridge the gaps between middle school and high school. Having female college mentors who have been through what they students are experiencing is very helpful because the students have somebody to talk to who can give them advice on how they handled similar situtations. The students from your school are put in groups or families of no more than six and those students are all given the same mentor. This helps the students have others in the school who they can go to and discuss issues with who are apart of their group and of which they have a sense of trust.
College and Career Awareness
The EMERGE program also focuses on the importance of taking math and science classes in high school, and how these classes effect college and careers descisions. Students that participate in the EMERGE program, learn how important it is to start thinking about college and future careers at a young age. That way they can take classes that will help them get into the college they want. We accomplish this by having students explore many different career options and what the day to day tasks are for their profession of interest. Students also learn how to look for colleges, scholarhips, and what is required of them to get into higher education. During the past two years students have had the ability to visit Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, sit in on college classes, visit a biomedical plant and learn what type of jobs they offer and what the role of an engineer is in their facility.
Students also have activities and lessons in life skills. This helps them develop a sense of self confidence which can be used in all aspects of life. Time management, Money, self-confidence, making decisions, caring for others, and how to deal with rejection are just a few life skills that are covered. All of these skills help students bridge that gap between middle and high school, not to mention giving them skills for life beyond high school. Students in the past have really enjoyed covering these topics because its not things they necessarily think about but need to know.
What it Takes
For a school to be a part of the EMERGE program they first need to have a sponsor from the school. This will be a contact person for the students in the program and will work with the EMERGE coordinator at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Schools are in charge of deciding which students should be offered to be in the program. We rely on the school to pick students who are self-motivated, interested in seeking higher education, and would enjoy being a part of a mentoring program like EMERGE. Students need to have access to a computer and the internet for at least 30 minutes a week to take part in the program.
Security
The EMERGE program is hosted on the PRISM website. We use the Moodle Learning Management System to host the mentoring groups. Our site is extremely secure and used by hundreds of teachers everyday to host their own classes, homework, quizzes and tests. All communication from the mentors to the mentees is done through our secure site and is monitored by the EMERGE coordinator and saved on our personal server. The only people who have access to the mentoring groups other than the mentor and mentee are the three members of the PRISM team. This includes the system administrator, programmer, and the EMERGE director. We take security seriously and you can be assured we do our best at keeping every user on our site safe.