Students
DREAMS - JEGNA Brotherhood – Summer Mentoring InstituteThe Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence in the College of Education at Georgia State University sponsored a Summer Leadership/Mentorship Institute entitled the JEGNA Brotherhood. This institute was designed to engage male high school students in activities that develop social competency, increase self-understanding and positive images in high school students. The institute seeks to increase the likelihood of the participants’ future engagement of other students in positive, healthy mentoring relationships. Strivings toward these aspirations took the form of encouraging and scaffolding the students’ team-building, leadership, mentoring, identity development, and etiquette/social skills. 34 students from three Atlanta urban schools, The Early College at the New Schools at Carver, Daniel M. Therrell High School, and Tri-Cities High School, participated in this program. The Center, through the Deans Office, also received a systemic partnership grant to assess program outcomes for DREAMS participants, identify programmatic processes, and to assess program sustainability. After participation in the JEGNA program, the students perceived themselves to be more academically self-efficacious, reflecting an increase in their perceived ability to handle different aspects of their educational pursuits, and they also scored higher on the SAT and other standardized tests in comparison to other male students in the Atlanta-Public School System. Still in its pilot stage, the plan is to make the Leadership/Mentoring Academy an annual event and to publish its influences on academic efficacy, academic achievement, and peer mentoring in academic journals.
DREAMS – Ananse-Aya Sisterhood
The Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence sponsored the Ananse-Aya Sisterhood, a program that seeks to prepare young women to become leaders in their schools, communities, and larger society. To help achieve this goal, five college students from Georgia State University mentored 20 African-American female adolescents and engaged them in group activities that intended to build effective leadership skills, enhance their positive coping strategies, expand their knowledge of educational and economic opportunities, and provide a positive environment for their identity development. This intervention program extends beyond the DREAMS summer institute into the school year with monthly group meetings and activities for the young women. Future plans for this project includes research aimed at investigating the effects that the sisterhood has on young girls’ resiliency, academic expectations, academic achievement, self-esteem, and cultural heritage awareness, in which pre-post data is currently being collected.
Urban Education Freshman Learning Community
An emergent outcome that has transpired from the collaboration of the Alonzo A. Crim Center with the Jumpstart program has been the development of an Urban Education Freshmen Learning Communities (FLC). FLC’s are identified by a variety of themes that appeal to both specific and broad areas of academic interests and disciplines. While the themes reflect content and subject matter based in traditional academic disciplines—art, business, education, humanities, natural and social sciences, the learning communities are not necessarily major-based, nor should they be thought of as pertaining solely to one discipline or field.
Entitled “The Urban Education Freshman Learning Community”, the Alonzo A. Crim Center’s FLC is designed for students who are interested in exploring urban education through a combination of hands-on experience, group discussion and educational activities. Students will study the basic principles of child development and the effect that early literacy has on the educational achievement gap. The program is designed for participants to reflect on urban education’s issues and to strategize solutions. Your experiences will allow you to expand your knowledge, challenge your paradigm and support your classmates’ development. A unique component of the Urban Education Community is the student’s participation in the Jumpstart program. Urban Education will allow students to work with a small group of children in an early childhood center through the Jumpstart program. All students will be required to complete at least 10 hours per week of fieldwork. Students will use their Jumpstart experience to make connections between an individual child’s experience and the materials covered in the classroom setting.
Mission: Mentor
The Crim Center welcomes a student organization, Mission: Mentor that focuses on community service and promotion of educational excellence through one-on-one mentoring. A trained college undergraduate student mentored one-three students in several schools in Atlanta Public Schools. The mission of the program is to empower and revive the youth in inner city schools by encouraging and focusing on the essential skills necessary to prosper in a complicated society. During the 2006-2007 school year, Mission: Mentor recruited 60 undergraduate students matriculating in various majors within the university. These students served 200 students ranging in grades Pre-K to 12th.
Tighter Grip
In 2002, Tighter Grip was created to increase the recruitment and retention of African-American males at Georgia State University. The members work to form a brotherhood, in which each individual member is responsible for ensuring the success of all other members. In order to create a dynamic and lasting experience for the members, Tighter Grip works to develop its members both academically and socially. Since its inception, Tighter Grip has experienced exponential growth in membership, resources, and success stories.
For more information, please visit the Tighter Grip website.
Softer Touch
Softer Touch is the sister organization to Tighter Grip. In addition to increasing the recruitment and retention of African-American females at Georgia State University, they have an interest in serving the children of underserved/underprivileged communities. A strong presence both on campus and in the community, the young ladies of Softer Touch are blazing forward with a clear mission of making a difference. They are true change agents.
Uplifted Hands
Uplifted Hands is a foster care initiative sponsored by Georgia State University, created by former foster/ adopted youth, seeking a change in the emotional well-being of foster/adopted children in college.
The National Association of Black Engineers (NSBE)
The National Society of Black Engineers, with more than 24,000 members across the United States, is one of the largest student-managed organizations in the country. NSBE is comprised of more than 270 chapters on college and university campuses, 75 Alumni Extension chapters nationwide and 75 Pre-College chapters. These chapters are geographically divided into six regions.
The Georgia State University Chapter of NSBE was founded in 2006, with a mission to “increase the number of culturally responsible Black Engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community.” Although their presence is fresh on campus, they have already made great strides toward achievement, with upwards of 40 members and growing. For more information, please visit the website at www.nsbe.org.