Second year of Rocket2Rocket mentoring under way

The second year of the Rocket2Rocket Peer Mentorship program launched yesterday at a mentor-mentee meet-up event at the peer mentor center in the Student Union building.

The R2R program is a peer mentorship program for incoming freshmen who received the Blue and Gold Scholarship as a part of the UT Guarantee Initiative.

"We select about 250 of those scholarship recipients to be matched with mentors to help in the transition, and also help to offer them the skills so that they can keep their scholarships," said Interim Dean of Students Michele Martinez.

Martinez said students are selected at random for the program.

This year, about 250 out of 900 Blue and Gold Scholars were selected.

The R2R program includes more than just peer mentoring.

"Every Sunday, we will have our Sunday Success program, which was new last spring semester," Martinez said. "We encourage our Rocket2Rocket mentees to come and study together."

Rocket2Rocket also hosts social events, including a Halloween party, as well as programs to promote good study skills such as time management.

Many students have utilized the peer mentor center where the R2R program is located.

"Last year, we probably had 50 to 75 students visit the peer mentor center for tutoring and other activities each week," Martinez said.

One of those students is Lauren Merrell, a sophomore majoring in pharmacy, who was a R2R mentee last year.

Merrell said the Rocket2Rocket program helped her through a difficult experience during her freshman year.

"During first semester, my grades dropped because my grandma got sick," Merrell said. "I had to do a lot of grade deletes and my grades were bad, and I had to go through the appeal process, so second semester, I was required to come to study tables and all that to make sure I got the grades, and that's when my mentor really started helping me."

Martinez said this year's program will be more personal since there will be less mentees to each mentor.

"Last year, every mentor had up to four people, and that seemed to be too much, so now we've scaled back a little bit," she said. "The mentors should not have more than two people, and I think that will help both of them."

At yesterday's event, about 75 mentors out of the 125 trained were able to attend.

"We had quite a few people who couldn't make it [yesterday], so we'll continue to match people up throughout the week," Martinez said.

Those 75 mentors were paired up with around 130 mentees at yesterday's event.

The program has undergone several changes since it began last year.

"This year, we're just doing mentors and mentees," Martinez said. "Last year, we had faculty staff mentors, who mentored the mentors, and it got to be quite a bit without any full-time help."

Some students participating in the program can also tell that this year will be different.

"I'm looking forward to it this year because last year was kind of like the study of Rocket2Rocket," Merrell said. "They weren't really sure of what would happen, so this year we have a lot more people and a lot more activities planned, so it'll be a lot more fun and more involved."

Martinez also said UT is in the process of hiring a retention specialist to work within the program.

"When we get that person on board, they'll actually be working on this as well as other initiatives," she said.

While the Rocket2Rocket program is making many steps forward, it is also a work in progress.

"This is a program that we hope to grow with more full-time staff, and we're looking into making a difference in our retention here at the university," Martinez said.

— The Rocket2Rocket program is always accepting freshmen mentees and upperclassmen interested in becoming mentors. To learn more, contact rocket2rocket@utoledo.edu.