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California-based Jennifer Klein is a single mom and freelance sign language interpreter whose income varies from one month to the next. When her daughter began applying to four-year colleges last year, the cost to attend was always going to be front and center. But Klein is also remarried, which changes the math in the eyes of FAFSA (the Free Application for Federal Student Aid). Figuring out what school her daughter could afford to attend was a confusing landscape.

Given a lack of easily accessible information on college affordability, Klein and her daughter did what many families do: applied to schools of interest and hoped for the best when it came to scholarships and aid. “I told her to apply wherever she wanted and we’d see what happens,” Klein said. “I just jumped in and filled out FAFSA, having no idea if that was helping or hurting.”

Klein’s daughter is a high-performing student, so they had that in their corner. After whittling down her list and sending out applications to colleges in the West Coast region, Klein’s daughter received good news: The University of California, Davis offered her the prestigious Regents Scholarship, worth $7,500 per year. The state of California also chipped in $7,400 through its Middle Class Scholarship, bringing the $46,000 sticker price down to approximately $30,000. Additionally, Klein took out a Parent PLUS loan to help round out the remaining costs not covered by savings and income.

In the grand scheme of things, the Kleins had an easy ride. But for lower-income and first-generation students who have had little to no exposure to the complex college affordability equation, there’s often a sense of helplessness. High schools may not have the resources to adequately inform these students about monies available to them. Left with not much more than the sticker price they read on a college website, many students give up and fall through the cracks, never knowing what funding might be available. 

According to the National College Attainment Network, these students left $4.4 billion in unclaimed Pell Grants in 2024, which represents an increase of $400 million from the class of 2023. “So much comes down to students and families knowing what to expect from college costs so that they can prepare for the future,” said Brendan Williams, vice president of knowledge at uAspire, a non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the economic mobility of underrepresented students by creating financial solutions to diverse postsecondary pathways. “When they miss out on understanding the funding available to them, these students and families think college isn’t affordable.” 

Even when introduced to some of the funding avenues, students and their parents can find the FAFSA, financial aid, and scholarship applications processes confusing. Most people, according to an NCAN survey, significantly overestimate the cost of both public two- and four-year institutions. 

“Most first-gen students assume they can’t afford college or that they’ll have to go into massive debt to afford it,” said Shellee Howard, C.E.O. and professional certified college consultant at College Ready. “There’s also a lot of negativity surrounding college affordability on social media, which discourages students before they even have a chance to succeed.”

There’s also the issue of language barriers in some cases, which adds an extra hurdle for some first-gen students and their families. The result is that too many students are missing out on opportunities. At a time when recent research points to the fact that by 2031, 72 percent of jobs  will require post-secondary education and/or training, that’s a giant loss for students — and the economy as a whole. 

A Landscape of Confusion 

In an ideal world, all high school students and their families would receive detailed information and assistance about the costs of college and ways to make it affordable. The government’s Federal Student Aid website would be easy to navigate and FAFSA/the student aid index easily understandable. But that’s not the world in which students live. 

“The system is broken,” Howard said. “It’s a huge problem and has existed for years.”

Howard was a first-gen student herself and today is the parent of four children who have all navigated the college application process, graduating debt free with her help. “If a family has an education and the finances, they hire a consultant to help them,” she said. “But if they are first generation, they have a long runway to start the process and don’t know what resources exist.” 

For lower-income and first-generation students who have had little to no exposure to the complex college affordability equation, there’s often a sense of helplessness.

One federal resource, housed under the Department of Defense Education Activity and designed to help students with college readiness, is the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program. Its stated goal is to support students in the “academic middle” —those who have the potential to succeed at increasingly higher levels but may need additional support to fully realize their potential. The program’s centerpiece is a toolkit to support future-ready skills like time management, organization, and critical thinking. It also touches on financial literacy, with 85 percent of students who participate submitting FAFSA, compared to an average of 61 percent in the 2023-2024 academic year. 

At its best, AVID is a nationwide program facilitated by high school guidance counselors that students can take as a subject or in a study hall. According to Howard, however, not all AVID programs are created equal, and many are not integrated into curriculum. “At some schools, you may have a very motivated teacher who ensures AVID is easily available, and those students have a big advantage,” she said. “At others, students have to seek out the program and assistance.”

The affordability problem — or lack of financial literacy surrounding it — extends beyond first-gen and low-income students, however. Evelyn Jerome-Alexander, a college counselor with Magellan College Counseling, frequently works with middle-class families. “The families who hire me and my team generally appear on paper to be able to afford the somewhat obnoxious sticker prices of the most well-known colleges,” she said. “Many just grit their teeth and ‘find a way’ to pay for college. My focus is helping them realize there are so many opportunities for their kids to get a great education without taking money from their retirement accounts.” 

Jerome-Alexander finds that most high school counselors don’t have the bandwidth to help students go beneath the surface with college affordability because much of the equation is highly individualized. One issue is the federal student aid index (S.A.I.), she said. “The S.A.I. sees an income level but doesn’t understand your expenses and what you have to spare for education.” 

One family Jerome-Alexander worked with, for instance, had a nice six-figure income. After going through the S.A.I. via FAFSA, they received no financial aid. On the surface, this would appear logical and realistic for such a high income. “But they also had a special needs child that requires very big expenses and will well into the future,” she said. “FAFSA doesn’t care about that or about how much you spend on education.”

This was a case where Jerome-Alexander’s guidance to complete the College Scholarship Service Profile application — which colleges and universities use to award non-federal institutional aid — made a big difference for the family. 

But families who can access counseling services like Jerome-Alexander’s and Howard’s are the lucky ones. Lower-income and first-gen students depend on their schools, web searches, books, and more resources they may not realize are available.

Programs to Help 

Like uAspire, MyinTuition is a non-profit with a mission to help mid- and low-income students understand the cost of college and find their most affordable option. Created by Phillip Levine, a professor and economist at Wellesley College, the organization runs on the theory that there’s an information problem when it comes to college costs. “To make a good decision about college, you need to know how much it will cost,” he said. “We haven’t made that easy in America.” 

While the federal government requires that all public higher ed institutions post the cost of college on their websites, the truth is that very few students actually pay full price, Levine said. “If you have a very high income, you’ll pay that number,” he said. “But most people are not in that category.”

Most people, however, don’t understand that fact. Net price calculators can be difficult to find and use; there’s a good deal of confusing jargon in college-cost speak; and even FAFSA can deter people nervous about sharing their tax information. This is where community-based non-profits hope to fill in the gaps. 

MyinTuition has created its own fiscal tools to help aspiring college students understand their real costs. Right now, the organization is partnered with about 70 colleges and universities. “It’s not perfect, but it provides a ballpark estimate and range, which is a huge advantage,” Levine said. 

Getting tools and information dispensed to students and their families will continue to be one of the biggest barriers, and Williams from uAspire sees lost opportunities here. “I can’t reiterate how important it is that college costs are family conversations,” he said. “High school is a time when you have a captive audience, but often, even when there are informational meetings, they take place when many low-income parents might be working.”

Today, uAspire operates in Boston, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area, working alongside high school counselors. Where they don’t have a physical presence, Williams and his team are deploying to high schools in a “train the trainer” format. Williams hopes to keep building out his model, continuously working to close the financial literacy gap.

An Uncertain Future 

The wild card in all things related to college affordability is change at the federal government level. Step by step, the Department of Education is shutting down. The department, which has long administered the federal student aid program, is transferring the TRIO programs, for instance, which provide post-secondary education services for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The D.O.E. is also offloading the Title III Part B program, which provides grants to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, as well as the Gaining Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs.

The $1.5 trillion federal student aid program will likely land with the Small Business Administration, which has no experience managing the program and has experienced its own 40 percent staffing cuts this year. 

And then there is the Big Beautiful Bill. “The bill is vague and there are many misconceptions surrounding it,” Howard said. “It has both advantages and disadvantages.”

In the plus column, Howard believes, is the fact that the bill allows more flexibility for 529 plans. Families will now be able to use 529 plans for credentialing programs and trade certifications. They will also be able to apply funds to tutoring, testing fees, and continuing education programs required to obtain or maintain professional credentials. 

Yet as it stands, the bill is also gutting $300 billion from higher education, eliminating the most affordable repayment options on student loans. By some measures, the bill will mean that a typical college graduate will pay nearly $3,000 more per year in student loan payments. 

Other changes from the bill include the elimination of Grad PLUS loans, which cover expenses for graduate-level programs, and new caps on Parent PLUS loans beginning in 2026. Klein, who is using a Parent PLUS loan, remains unaffected, as the program grandfathers in borrowers prior to July 1, 2026. 

While the future remains uncertain, Levine said there is some bi-partisan agreement that understanding college costs is too complicated and creating a significant barrier to entry for too many eligible students. Whether this results in any sort of reform in today’s environment is anyone’s guess. For now, however, Levine has this thought: “At the end of the day, we want students applying to schools that are the best fit for them academically and geographically. If their decision is based on affordability, that’s a constraint. If they can afford it and don’t realize it, however, that’s a failure in the system.” 

In early November, a swirl of accusations and counter-accusations erupted in social media from the University of Miami. A disagreement between two students, one of them a prominent campus influencer, became fueled by commentary and reaction videos from strangers across the country. It swelled into a conversation about cruelty that led to the dean’s office and eventually to a national news story about young adult influencer culture and social status. But it roiled with something even larger and darker for young adults figuring out their place in the world: what it means to matter or not.

The incident, covered in The Washington Post, highlighted a core truth about the social waters young people swim in today. Popularity — if it can even be reduced to a single word that sounds so 80s, so geeks and jocks, so John Hughes movies — is no longer about just being cool at school. For this generation, social standing is shaped by a temperamental mix of in-person dynamics, the curated worlds of social media, and the invisible pull of moral and emotional expectations among peers. What makes it noteworthy, however, is this: The more psychologists and social scientists learn about wellness, the more so-called popularity is understood as something not outgrown after the mercurial adolescent years. The way a young person chases social standing — and comes to think of themselves during these years — has an impact upon social maturity and wellness for life. 

“The dynamics of popularity affect our relationships, our careers, our success in meeting our goals, and ultimately our happiness,” said psychologist Mitch Prinstein, author of “Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World.” As director of clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Prinstein has researched adolescent and young adult social dynamics for decades. And he believes the new landscape of popularity includes multiple categories. 

“There is likability, and there is status,” he said, “and there is now an online popularity that looks a lot like status, but it’s reinforced with actual quantified metrics that tell you exactly how popular you and every post and comment you’ve ever made may be.”  

As some cold countries are said to have 50 words for snow, the digital age may need an expanded vocabulary for popularity.

Status, or Perceived Popularity

A generation ago, the popular students were those with visible influence: the athletes, the charismatic leaders, the beautiful people and style setters. Prinstein calls this “status popularity,” built on visibility, dominance, and the ability to set social norms. It’s less about being well-liked than being noticed and acknowledged as powerful. It often emerges in adolescence but continues to matter into adulthood, especially in environments that reward hierarchy, competitiveness, and performance. 

This is the terrain of old-school status that still exists, where the superficially strong survive and bullies thrive. Physical attractiveness still carries an advantage; in young adults, so do subtle cues of wealth or access, like coming from certain zip codes or private schools, having a luxurious vacation home or fancy car.

Students are remarkably clear-eyed about this. One junior who described her sorority as “top tier” recognized that social circles sometimes coalesce around people with access to attributes of wealth and connections. But even in that environment, access doesn’t buy genuine affection. “People hang out with some kids because of the things they have access to — like money, drinks, drugs — even if they don’t like them that much.” Clothes can matter as barometers of style, she said, but the more subtle the better, lest you be seen as trying too hard, or “too Gucci.” Those might be your party friends, but “you wouldn’t trust them with your secrets.”

Athletic success can function as modern status currency as well. Ben, a recent graduate of Northeastern University, noted that athletes who are recognized as being on the path toward professional fame can have name recognition on campus — though he was quick to add that if they are jerks, they might be more notorious than popular, per se. Tessa Garcia, a therapist who works with adolescents and young adults in the San Francisco Bay area, called athletic achievement one of the “most intense” forms of comparison, for better or for worse, because “it’s concrete — it’s right there, publicly seen, how many goals you scored or missed.”

On many campuses, Greek life reinforces a hyper-visible hierarchy. For some students, Greek life becomes a social safety net, perhaps after struggling to make connections elsewhere. But it can also be a gauntlet of scrutiny and self-doubt, of striving for “top-tier” houses that offer the QR codes as door entry to the best parties. Garcia compared parts of the sorority rush process to “getting recruited for a sport — except your sport is your identity.” Appearance, enthusiasm, and social-media presence are evaluated as if they were performance metrics. 

Donna Steinberg, a longtime college mental health counselor in New Hampshire who has worked with Dartmouth students, sees this emotional toll up close. “Freshmen are going to the frat parties, trying to belong,” she said. “By sophomore year they have to decide whether to pledge, and the Greek system can look like pure tiers and ranking. They can be crushed by rejection, and they have to make sense of it somehow. Usually, they patch themselves up by the time they become seniors, but that sense of questioning why can stay with them.”

The New Status Economy Online

If traditional status operates through in-person visibility, digital status popularity operates through metrics: follower counts, likes, shares, and algorithmic amplification. This form of popularity is volatile, public, and precarious. Any interpersonal conflict can become a public spectacle, and any student’s reputation can be remade or destroyed in real time, at least for those who put stock in digital popularity. 

If traditional status operates through in-person visibility, digital status popularity operates through metrics.

Online popularity looks a whole lot like status, Prinstein said. But instead of being inferred through social cues, it is quantified with numbers. Students now live with a permanent scoreboard next to their names. “Things like follower counts play a really big role, and that could be because you’re a good content creator and you just happen to attract a lot of people to your content, and that has nothing to do with your social skills. And that alone is enough to give you high status in your particular online niche.”

The University of Miami controversy illustrates how quickly online status can ignite conflict — and how swiftly it can smolder in public humiliation. Students who were previously known only within their campus community suddenly found themselves scrutinized by thousands of strangers. Some aspiring influencers who want to monetize this milieu choose majors in marketing, communications, and digital media, giving academic clout and higher stakes to the personal side of content creation and brand building.

For some undergraduates, courting this attention is intentional, but can be fleeting. Because online status can be gained or lost overnight, students may find themselves constantly monitoring, adjusting, curating, and performing — an emotional drain further removing them from the “real world” of interaction. It shapes perceptions — who is seen as aspirational, who is judged, who is excluded. Prinstein worries that social media collapses the nuance of human relationships into flattened, reactive fragments. “Your humanity is 128 characters long. You’re as good as your last post.” Young adults internalize this without realizing they are aligning their behavior with a system that rewards controversy, beauty, or performance more than kindness or integrity. 

And yet, the paradox is striking: Online popularity is everywhere, yet often irrelevant to the relationships that make college life meaningful. Someone cultivating an influencer persona isn’t necessarily an authentic person others want to call friend. 

“You see these people trying to be influencers, posting day-in-the-life videos. Usually, it’s considered kind of… cringey. Like it’s trying too hard,” said Sophie, a senior at the University of Virginia. The reaction, she said, is often skeptical: “We know you. You’re not living that life.”

Zoe, a sophomore at Vanderbilt, sees similar disconnects. “Someone can be huge on TikTok,” she said, “but on campus nobody cares. It doesn’t translate.”

Some students recognize this, and speak about the difference between the friends you “go out with to clubs” and the friends you “go grocery shopping with in pajamas.” 

Interestingly, many students emphasize the shift from status-based judgments in high school to authenticity-based judgments in college — a form of social standing that depends less on being admired and more on being someone others feel comfortable around. Once you find your people, Sophie said, there’s really no such thing as popularity anymore. 

“Honestly,” Ben agreed, “I don’t think there is really the idea of popularity in college these days, or at least not at Northeastern. There are fraternities; there are sororities; there are athletes and theater kids and everything in between. But nobody really looks at a different clique and feels like they’re less. Do you know a lot of people and do fun things? It’s not like high school. There’s no prom king.”

Warmth, Empathy, and the Social Skills that Last 

Likability — or sociometric popularity — reflects the degree to which someone is genuinely well-liked, trusted, and valued by peers. It emerges from warmth, empathy, emotional intelligence, and kindness. A young person who embodies these traits is often recognized early as someone other kids want to be around and parents want their children to spend time with. 

That degree of natural confidence might be the most organically attractive factor of all: the confidence to be kind to others without worrying how cool it makes you look or not, or whether being nice to someone who isn’t cool will be a social liability. “Being a generally likable person — someone who is a really good communicator, a good listener, and someone who’s interesting, — is what honestly makes you well-known and well-liked by the greatest number of people,” Sophie said. 

Zoe echoed this. Being outgoing and confident is naturally attractive, she said. If you are comfortable in your own skin, and interesting, it makes others want to be in your orbit. And it also gives you more latitude to be different. “People are attracted to people who’ve got spice and pizzazz. One of my guy friends is a huge history geek. He went to a museum during his fraternity formal road trip to New Orleans,” she said. “People really respect when you got something that’s a little bit edgy to you because it shows that you have a personality. There’s more than just what meets the eye. It’s endearing and alluring because it’s like, ‘Oh, I want to hear more about this person.’”

Prinstein considers likability the most important of the popularity types, noting that it predicts our health, our marriage, our salary, our parenting skills, even our age at death. Unlike status, which can be addictive but hollow, likability forms the basis for stable, meaningful relationships across the lifespan and decreases the chances that we’ll be lonely — a real wellness risk as we age.

Educators’ Takeaway: Recognize the Forces at Work

College students today are navigating an exceptionally layered social reality. For educators, counselors, and other adults who work with young adults, understanding this complexity is essential to being able to provide guidance that resonates with them.

Adults who grew up in an era before social media may underestimate the emotional force of public scrutiny, said Garcia, who emphasizes that these students are “the first generation growing up with themselves being exposed in ways previous generations weren’t.” And the punitive repercussions of social media situations like those at the University of Miami have to be recognized as a significant risk to wellbeing. Acknowledging the legitimacy of these pressures is the first step toward helping students manage them.

Because likability predicts long-term well-being, educators can foster it through intentional shifts in group discussions, promoting collaborative rather than competitive norms, and creating structured opportunities for students to form meaningful relationships.

In environments where Greek life, varsity athletics, selective majors, or elite internships are status dynamics that carry enormous weight, educators and counselors can help students make sense of these systems and disentangle personal worth from external ranking. For students who may feel “crushed” by rush rejection or other status-based competitive pressure, compassionate reframing can prevent temporary disappointment from becoming lasting harm.

Popularity today is a complex and sometimes contradictory matrix of status, visibility, and genuine connection. Students may be admired online but lonely on campus, or socially powerful in one community and invisible in another. They may chase influence without realizing they are sacrificing belonging — or believe they are failing socially when they are actually cultivating the kind of friendships that endure. 

Prinstein’s research underscores that these distinctions matter. For educators and other adults, the work is not to dismantle popularity but to guide students toward the version that sustains them. In a world where social media can amplify every misstep, and where the stakes of visibility feel impossibly high, helping students build the skills of authentic connection is not ancillary to their success — it is central to it. 

“Likability and status can go hand in hand. In fact, about, I think, a third of kids who have high social status are also very likable,” Prinstein said. “We should be investing lots of time and energy in helping kids to appropriately navigate a social world in real life instead of chasing metrics that end up not lasting. Even kids who are having the hardest time with peers can do really, really well with one trusted mutual friend and positive friendship. We need to help those who are suffering by helping them to have an actual relationship with a real human offline.” 

Prinstein emphasizes moving away from metrics: encouraging students to invest in the relationships that ground them, rather than the platforms that distract or distort — and to appreciate that status doesn’t have to build at the expense of authenticity. You can have status and style and still be the friend people choose to go grocery shopping.

James Forten was nine years old when he stood among the crowd outside the Pennsylvania State House to hear the newly signed Declaration of Independence read aloud for the first time. In 1776, he was a free Black boy, for whom the universal human rights laid out in the Declaration were far from promised, nor intended to be so as a result of the forthcoming revolution. Forten still fought for America. At 14, he joined the Continental Navy and, upon being captured by the British, chose imprisonment at home over an offer of release to England. He survived the war and went on to grow a flourishing sail-making business. It made him one of richest men in Philadelphia and funded wide-ranging abolitionist efforts, including William Lloyd Garrison’s famous paper, “The Liberator.”

Those who tune into the latest documentary from prolific filmmaker Ken Burns, “The American Revolution,” will learn about Forten in the final episode. His is one of many lesser-known stories in the six-part, nearly 12-hour series and, perhaps, a favorite of Burns, who invoked the young revolutionary during a panel discussion at New York University last week: “He does not for a second believe these self-evident truths don’t apply to him,” Burns said emphatically of Forten’s immediate grasp of what the Declaration of Independence could mean. “He knows they apply to him.”

To Burns, Forten seems to offer a model for how today’s young people, too, might pull from foundational American ideals to shape their own vision of the future. The documentarian was at N.Y.U. as part of a campaign to promote his new film among students at colleges and universities. On November 19, the “Campus Conversation” brought together Burns, his co-director Sarah Botstein, two experts featured in the film — law professor Maggie Blackhawk of N.Y.U and history professor Christopher Brown of Columbia University — and a moderator, politics professor Patrick Egan, also of N.Y.U. They asked each other: At a time when students might feel removed from — or repelled by — their nation’s early and flawed history, how could this film’s fresh telling be helpful to them, even inspiring?

Coinciding with the event was an announcement from its host school: The day prior, N.Y.U. launched its new Berkley Institute for Civil Discourse and Civic Solutions. It’s one of the latest centers of its kind, designed to promote engagement with diverse perspectives, in an ongoing trend towards building them on college campuses. Egan, the moderator of the Burns conversation, is the institute’s inaugural director.

Early American history would certainly be fertile ground for civil discourse centers interested in taking up and sorting through topics fraught with controversy. “The American Revolution,” for one, does not shy away from challenging, sometimes disturbing truths; their inclusion is part of an explicit mission to offer a complete portrait of this moment in history. The patriots of the 13 colonies may have bravely defended their freedom from tyranny, the film reveals, but they also hanged British representatives in the streets — poured hot tar over one in particular and covered him humiliatingly with feathers. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence asserting the necessity of liberty for all, while being attended to by an enslaved valet, the young son of Jefferson’s father-in-law and one of his slaves. George Washington, who also owned hundreds of slaves, was the revered general who led his forces to victory and recruited them in part by promising each enlisted hundreds of acres in Western, Native-populated land that wasn’t his to give away. 

At N.Y.U., Burns captured one of the most central and slippery contradictions of early America — as both anti-colonial mission and burgeoning empire at once. “We called it the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, and we knew where we were going,” Burns said in reference to plans for westward expansion. 

Confronting these contradictions may be how “The American Revolution” draws in today’s college students. In moving beyond a traditional or glorified rendition of the founding, the documentary digs up details that feel less tired or overfamiliar. Even more, it presents a period whose intense divisions are evocative of American life in 2025 and how people at every level of society, not just the top, drew from the emerging notions of equality and democracy to push for personal understandings of justice.

“The people who wrote it down may not have been representative of us, but the people who have put it into motion — even until today — are us. And it still is something that a lot of us are pushing for and that young people do care about it.”

Yasmeen Rifai, a junior studying politics at N.Y.U., attended the conversation with Burns and said she appreciated its inclusion of “all the other groups that are so often left out.” What resonated with her most was the discussion of how those at the margins adopted and repurposed certain foundationally American ideals, for example, from the Declaration of Independence.

“The people who wrote it down may not have been representative of us, but the people who have put it into motion — even until today — are us,” Rifai said. “And it still is something that a lot of us are pushing for and that young people do care about it.”

Young people in particular were central to the revolutionary movement, said Christopher Brown, the Columbia history professor who participated in both the panel and the documentary itself. So despite ongoing cycles of older generations grumbling about the politics of younger ones, a youthful inclination to fight for the future appears to be as old as the country itself. “Political activism is part of our culture. It’s part of what freedom is about,” Brown said in an interview with LearningWell. “So I also think that the Revolutionary Age is a little bit of a reminder that this is a country that was founded in political division and was energized by political mobilization rather than political quiescence.” That goes for politics across the aisle, he said.

Young people may find the applications of Burns’s film are not only political or intellectual but also personal. In the style of “formative education,” engaging with the liberal arts, history included, is a way of exposing students to different ideas and traditions they can then use to reflect on their own, larger values — moral, spiritual, and otherwise. Stanton Wortham, an anthropologist and dean at the Boston College Lynch School of Education, said this process of reflection is what he and others in the formative education field call “discernment.”

“It’s a projection of yourself into a historical situation,” Wortham said of the practice for students of history. “That gives you a chance to develop not just intellectually because you’re learning new things and learning how to reason and look at evidence and so forth, but it also gives you a chance to engage with this ethical challenge that somebody else was facing and think about your own values and what your own values would lead you to do.”

The purpose of the approach, then, is not to tell students what to believe, but rather to expose them to the kind of provocative questions that let them consider for themselves. When it comes to the American Revolution, questions of tyranny and rule, justice and violence, might emerge. “A lot of people got killed. Was that okay? Was it okay that a whole bunch of people got killed for these particular ideals because they imagined a particular way of life was right?” Wortham said he might ask students of the period. “Does that apply today? There are lots of people today who are living in situations that are unjust, so should we be supporting people who are fighting back against what we or they consider as unjust things?”

Of course, all the ways students could interact with Burns’s new film are not a promise that they will, in fact, do so. Yasmeen Rifai, the junior at N.Y.U., had yet to see the series at the time of the campus event, although she said the conversation did make her want to start. Christopher Brown said former students now in their 30s and 40s have written to him to say they saw him in the documentary, though more recent ones have not. 

Amanda Garvey is only a first-year at N.Y.U. but already knows she wants to pursue a major in history. She attended the conversation with Burns last week because, she said, she loves the American Revolution. Originally from Bucks County, Penn., she grew up a short drive away from where George Washington once famously led troops across an icy Delaware River and towards a crucial victory in the war for independence.  

By Garvey’s discernment, the panel discussion illuminated an important and enduring legacy of not just crisis, but possibility. “What’s happening right now, it’s kind of a crazy time. I think the idea that these people were fighting for what they truly believed in — I think it still can be applicable today,” she said.

“Not everything is lost. There’s still hope, and I like that.”

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, war broke out in the listserv for alumni of Patrick Mason’s graduate program in peace studies. 

Not even advanced training in conflict management could stop the former classmates from dividing into camps and hurling accusations back and forth. For Mason, now a professor, the vitriol was disturbing, but also “galvanizing.” 

“What it revealed to me is that it’s not enough simply to have knowledge; it’s not enough even simply to have skills,” he said. “This kind of work has to sink deep into your heart and soul.”

At Utah State University, where Mason teaches Mormon history and culture, the belief that mastering peacebuilding requires certain personal aptitudes has inspired a new approach to the field — one focused on equipping students with the character traits they need to be successful, as much as the tools or theories. 

This fall, with a $747,310 grant from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University, U.S.U. launched a three-year project to promote, as its name suggests, “The Character of Peace,” campus-wide.

The project’s two primary initiatives include the development of general education courses to expose more students to “the character of peace;” and strengthening an existing program, Space-Makers, through which students trained in conflict management talk peers through life challenges.

For years, U.S.U., which Mason estimates serves a majority of students raised in the tradition of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been increasing attention to peace studies. 

In 2020, a group of U.S.U. faculty from different departments recognized a shared interest in peacebuilding and decided to create a formal certificate around it. Together, they identified a collection of classes across disciplines that covered conflict management and could count towards such a program.

It wasn’t long before one certificate turned into five. In 2022, philanthropist and U.S.U. alumnus Mehdi Heravi made a donation generous enough to endow an entire center dedicated for peace studies on campus: the Heravi Peace Institute. 

Now, students can pursue certificates in global peacebuilding as well as conflict management, interfaith leadership, leadership and diplomacy, and social entrepreneurship.

Beyond academic work, one of the funder’s personal priorities was to support experiential learning opportunities, like study away, internships, and foreign language training, that would help students apply their education to the real world. In a diversion from semesters abroad in popular cities like Barcelona and London, students of the H.P.I. head to some of the most consequential conflict sites in modern history. 

In nearby Preston, Idaho, a group visited the site of the Bear River massacre, the largest mass murder of Indigenous Americans by the U.S. military. Trips to Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Rwanda have offered similarly powerful insight into post-conflict societies, although in less familiar cultural contexts. 

Other activities at the H.P.I. include academic research, campus events, and community engagement. Non-students can attend conferences, workshops, and even entire courses in conflict management. 

In 2024, when H.P.I. Inaugural Director Austin Knuppe applied for and received a first, smaller grant from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest, the official foray into character education began.

Students of the H.P.I. head to some of the most consequential conflict sites in modern history. 

“It just so turns out in order to do that work effectively, you have to be a person of a certain type of disposition or character,” said Knuppe, a political science professor who specializes in political violence and conflict processes in the Middle East.

Alongside a team of interested colleagues, including Patrick Mason, Knuppe used the initial support from the E.C.I. to begin crafting a more formal framework around the attributes of a successful peacebuilder and how to teach them. 

The group ultimately landed on four key traits: moral imagination, or the dual compassion and creativity to consider undiscovered solutions; cognitive flexibility, or the open-mindedness to hold contradictory narratives; emotional attunement, or an awareness of the human lives at the core of any conflict; and reciprocal love, or the capacity to relate and, especially, forgive.

Another central concern in these early conversations about character, Mason said, was how to engage as many students as possible in the work. 

The primary objective has never been only to prepare the next generation of “peace professionals,” he explained, but to help young people across a range of degree programs with a range of professional aspirations become “better citizens.”

“If students only take one class from us, that’s okay. If they take three or five classes — if they get a whole certificate — fantastic,” Mason said. “We’re just really convinced it’s going to serve them well and serve our society well if we have more people out there with good conflict skills.”

For Justice Cheatham, a current junior at U.S.U., the original motivation to pursue peace studies stemmed from needing to tackle a personal conflict, rather than an academic or even professional one. 

When Cheatham started his first year of college, he was still struggling with the disappointment of having left early from his mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He had been stationed in Columbia, when he came down with a mysterious illness that forced him to return home and finish his service from there.

An introductory class during his first semester at U.S.U. covered conflict management and offered Cheatham a way forward. In a few sessions on interpersonal conflict, he gained a new vocabulary and skillset to deal with the difficult emotions he was battling.

Today, he is pursuing a certificate in conflict management alongside his major in communications and serves on the H.P.I’s inaugural student board. 

With general education courses in conflict management in the works, more students like Cheatham without prior interest in peacebuilding may similarly start to see its wide-ranging applications.

Junior Abbi Zaugg isn’t pursuing any of the academic certificates through the H.P.I., but she still attends events there. “I am just a great lover of thought exchange,” the double major in political science and creative writing said.

That’s the outlook that inspired her to join a recent conversation following the killing of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University — just a two-hour drive away from U.S.U. — about whether controversial speakers should appear on campus. 

“I was participating very, very heavily,” Zaugg said of her role in the session. Her favorite part of dialogues like these is being able to hear her peers respond to her ideas, even if they disagree.

The common narrative that Gen Z is unwilling to engage with viewpoints unlike their own indeed does not seem to apply to Zaugg, nor her peers who attended the same event.

Zaugg even wondered if today’s young people are uniquely suited to deal with conflict, given that “most of us have been in conflict since we were very young.” She called her nearly lifelong concerns about school safety “a normal fact of life.”

Justice Cheatham, who also attended the H.P.I. event, stepped away feeling proud of his fellow students. They didn’t have to show up to an uncomfortable conversation. The weather had been nice that evening. He knew they could have been hiking instead.

“I have a lot of faith in our generation, and I think we can change the world,” Cheatham said. 

Soon, students like Cheatham may have the opportunity to participate in change-making on the state level. 

Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who is a U.S.U. alumnus, has been considering new partners in higher education for his think tank, Disagree Better, to help advance programs for peace. The H.P.I. is at the table. 

The Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University recently announced a request for proposals for grants between $50,000 and $1,000,000 to fund character education projects at U.S. colleges and universities.

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

The week Charlie Kirk was killed on a campus across the country, a group of undergraduate researchers at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Penn. used their Friday meeting to talk about peace.

To guide their conversation, they turned to the records of students who came before them — who grappled with different controversies, but ones that similarly shaped their young lives and emerging beliefs. In 1960s editions of Seton Hill’s century-old newspaper, The Setonian, these archivists-in-training discovered voices both in support and rejection of the war in Vietnam. They analyzed photographs of their predecessors in protest, carrying signs insisting “Apathy Kills,” as well as an op-ed from the bipartisan National Student Committee for the Defense of Vietnam, which decried its radical peers and their “irresponsible opposition to our country’s policy in Vietnam.”

The past may not be prescriptive, and Vietnam-era editorials may not offer a how-to guide for peace in 2025, but there are lessons to be learned from shared history. That’s the idea behind Seton Hill’s new character education initiative, of which exploring The Setonian archives is one key part. The institution-wide endeavor centers efforts to derive and promote the values and virtues the Catholic liberal arts university was built on. That pursuit, its organizers hope, can strengthen students’ individual intellectual and personal development, while uniting the broader campus in collective understanding.

Literature professor Sarah Marsh, who is also the director of university curriculum, began spearheading Seton Hill’s entry into character education last year. She was inspired, she said, by a growing recognition that the purpose of higher education should encompass “making people,” rather than simply transferring degrees. From there, the direction for a character project at Seton Hill fell into place, given the strong sense of institutional identity she said already grounds school and student life. “Many universities have missions,” Marsh said. “Ours is present in the day-to-day.”

Seton Hill’s lasting mission stems from its unique origins as a project of a Catholic order of women religious, the Sisters of Charity. This congregation was founded in the early 19th century by Elizabeth Ann Seton — the first American-born saint for whom Seton Hill was named — and was devoted to spiritual as well as humanitarian work, particularly in service of the poor, education, and medical care. In 1882, what became the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill purchased the plot where Seton Hill University now sits, using it to educate younger pupils before launching a junior and then four-year college for women by 1918. 

A century later, Seton Hill is a coeducational university home to around 2,000 students of any (or no) denomination, yet loyal to the Catholic social values that started it all. “Anytime we’re having a conversation about curriculum, anytime we’re having a conversation about student wellbeing, anytime we’re having a conversation about student life, we are talking about the history and the charism of the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill,” Marsh said. 

“You feel a deeper connection in knowing and understanding who you are, how you’ve been formed, and the people who have come before you.”

A charism, Marsh clarified, is a set of values or “spiritual gifts” that the Sisters of Charity, who are still active, strive to embody in their vocational life. For those at Seton Hill, these gifts are expressed by four pillars — welcoming, learning, celebrating, and serving — that guide their work in the world and the university to this day.

In 2024, the pillars took on new meaning when Marsh decided to make them the crux of her vision for character education at Seton Hill. Awarded a $50,000 Capacity-Building grant from the Educating Character Initiative (E.C.I.) at Wake Forest University, she assembled a team of interdisciplinary faculty and staff to devise a unique definition of character education for the university. The succinct, one-page document that came out of their year’s work outlines how each of the institutional pillars reflects different character virtues. 

The pillar of welcoming, they write, refers to the virtue of hospitality, which involves a “conviction of the fundamental, and therefore equal, dignity of every human being.” The pillar of learning refers to humility and wisdom, virtues that allow people to recognize the limits of what they can know, as well as their personal biases. Celebrating refers to gratitude for others and life itself. Serving refers to prudence, or the translation of wisdom into practice to promote good.

With the clarity of these definitions, Marsh expanded the project further, applying for a second round of support from the E.C.I. This one, secured in July 2025, is an Institutional Impact grant of $438,000 to convert the character concepts Marsh and her colleagues developed into practice. Over the next three years, this process will feature two main initiatives: incorporating a series of character education courses into the required curriculum and enlisting students to pioneer research into the student newspaper archives.

The added coursework will form a “vertical pathway,” Marsh said, with one character education class for each grade level. For the youngest students, the First Year Seminar will introduce them to the fundamentals of character education and the Seton Hill mission. For sophomores, another pre-existing course called Faith, Religion, and Society will be infused with character theory to, Marsh said, “make students more aware of the virtues that they are practicing as they work through the content of that particular class.”

As for the subsequent two, higher-level courses, they have not yet been realized. When they are, juniors will take one called Setonian Mission, offering a more advanced understanding of the institutional virtues and taught by interdisciplinary faculty. Finally, seniors will engage in a Setonian Seminar, which Marsh called “a liberal arts capstone” to consider the purpose of their education and its translation to professional life. 

But even as this coursework emphasizes the virtues Marsh worked hard to pin down, she is sensitive to the idea that they intend to control or limit students’ thoughts or behaviors. “We’re not trying to create a person who votes in a particular way. We’re not trying to create a person who worships in a particular way,” she said. “We are trying to create the kind of person who has made commitments based on an authentic and rigorous experience of some fundamental things that we think are true about being human.”

A key part of this work is to help students find out who they are and who they want to be; that’s where exploring the student newspaper archives comes in. University archivist Casey Bowser, who is leading this research alongside Marsh, said the newspaper is an ideal point of reference for institutional character because it is the richest source of student voices. “It really defines a culture of our community in a way that almost few other records do,” she said. 

Seven undergraduates have embarked on the archival project, wherein the first semester offers training in how to use the newspaper archives and the second lets them pursue an original research question about character. As the students use the paper to ask how and why character has appeared at Seton Hill, they are also exercising the institutional intellectual virtues, like the humility to accept what they cannot know. Moreover, at a moment when student interest in the modern-day student newspaper has been waning, they will consider how to refresh the content and the value of journalism more broadly. 

According to Bowser, engaging with the archives has already left her research interns more energized about the legacy of not only The Setonian but the institution as a whole. “It’s almost like your own family,” she said. “You feel a deeper connection in knowing and understanding who you are, how you’ve been formed, and the people who have come before you.”

That sense of connection to the past, Bowser said, has also been powering students’ express desire to do justice to the publication going forward. In fact, the research project will culminate in the production of a governing document to guide the future of the paper — by drawing from its history. 

“It’s meant to be a bridge,” Marsh said, “between what we have done before and what we are doing next.”

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

When Hannah M. was a college student a few years ago, her mentor — the chair of her department — was, as she recalls, a thoughtful person who was also extraordinarily busy. “When I needed to know something about credits and certifications, she would say she’d get back to me,” Hannah said. “But she usually didn’t.” Hannah often ended up finding her own information about licensing or grants and making her own connections through LinkedIn. “I didn’t want to complain because I knew she meant well, and I had friends who didn’t have mentors at all.”

Mentorship has long been a cornerstone of youth development, but for young adults today, finding effective, supportive relationships is hit or miss. For mentors, meeting the shifting landscape of mentees’ needs can also be up to chance. According to MENTOR, a nonprofit national mentoring partnership, one in three young people grow up without a mentor figure, and those from low-income communities are even less likely to have one. This, in spite of the communication and technology advances today that surpass any other generation’s ability to make and maintain connections at a distance.

Jean Rhodes, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and founder of its Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring, has spent her career studying what makes mentorship effective. After publishing more than 250 peer-reviewed studies, she grew increasingly concerned that the field was stuck in outdated models. Despite decades of effort, the effect size of mentoring — the measurable impact on youth outcomes — has barely budged in 20 years. 

In response, she developed an A.I.-assisted platform that equips mentors with the tools, insights, and training her center has honed over the years, delivered to the palm of your hand. It isn’t intended to replace human connection but to enhance it. Rhodes describes the program as “rocket fuel for relationships” — a way to scale quality mentoring with resources at the moments they’re needed most.

The app, called MentorPRO, recently won the International Tools Competition for Higher Education, standing out among more than 1,000 entrants for its innovative approach to scaling relationships. It arrives at an odd juncture, a time when artificial intelligence is hailed as the zenith of information management, yet controversial for its role in therapeutic conversations. The fact that this advisory tool engages in both functions — information and support — is precisely what piques interest in the mentoring world. The question is: Can a tool feared to replace relationships actually make them more meaningful?  

A backdrop of need: The mentoring gap

Today’s disparity between the number of young people who would benefit from a mentor and the number of adults willing and available to serve as mentors is known as the mentoring gap. There’s been a worrying decline in “naturally occurring” mentoring relationships with teachers, coaches, and neighbors, which once provided widespread support. Organic mentoring relationships are based on rapport and familiarity, says Belle Rose Ragins, a mentoring expert and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, whose research makes the case that unless mentees have a basic relationship with their mentors, there is no discernable difference between people who have a mentor and those who don’t. 

The mentoring gap was underscored by statistics from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which reports that the number of 18 to 21 year-olds who say they’ve had a mentor has actually declined in the past decade — from about 66 percent in 2013 to 60 percent in 2022. And the mentoring opportunities that do exist are not distributed equally, often favoring those from higher-income households. The young adults most in need of mentorship — those navigating school-to-work transitions, financial pressures, mental health struggles, and social isolation — are often the least likely to receive it, the foundation found.

The Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring began to see that traditional mentoring had reached a plateau, with its measurable impact largely unchanged for more than two decades. Rhodes suspected the problem was rooted in the way we’re going about mentoring. Too often, she said, the friendship model — mentors provide companionship and a coffee date — is well-intentioned but inadequate.

“We’re still locked in friendship-based models that don’t match the complex needs of today’s young people,” Rhodes explained. “It feels good, but without training and structure, mentoring too often becomes mismatched to what mentees really need.”

This is especially true for young people grappling with major life transitions, as well as financial stress, depression, or trauma. Because most mentors are volunteers without formal training, the support they offer rarely matches the complexity of mentees’ needs. This mismatch is compounded by problems of scale and continuity: Due to constant turnover, cyclical programs and workplaces churn through new mentors without the infrastructure to sustain quality or deliver evidence-based guidance in real time. The result is a system that feels supportive but frequently fails to equip young adults with the structured, targeted help they most require. 

These challenges can stifle even the most well-intentioned program. At one large community college, for example, the executive director of its alumni foundation recalled a mentor scholarship program that, she thought, had a high potential for success. It was available to both women and men, highly motivated individuals with a G.P.A. of 3.0 or higher, and those accepted into the pilot were offered free tuition as well as a $500 book stipend. Mentorship was a cornerstone of the program: Participants were assigned a mentor based on their major and career interest and required to meet at least twice a month. Yet at the end of the inaugural year, only 50 percent of participants called it a success and opted to continue working with their assigned mentor.

“I was surprised and sad to hear about the results,” said the alumni foundation director. “But in the end, it’s like speed dating. It’s only as effective as the connection with the personality on the other side of the table, which is kind of a roll of the dice if you’re assigned to one another. Add to that the expectations a mentee might end up having, and unexpected needs, and it’s a total gamble. It’s almost impossible for the mentor to be prepared for all that in advance.”

A human-centered, A.I.-supported solution

During the pandemic, mentorship turned into e-mentoring by default, while colleges and other organizations struggled to stay connected with young people virtually. 

“The sudden shift to e-mentoring during the pandemic tested the capacity, professional skills, and adaptability of many mentoring programs,” concludes the MENTOR report “From Crisis into Capacity: Final Report on Findings from Recent Research on E-Mentoring,” funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “However, these rapid innovations also fostered a belief that e-mentoring is a meaningful addition to a program’s capacity and scope, and that with proper staffing and planning time, virtual program delivery warrants further scaling.” 

The Covid-19 shutdown made clearer the weaknesses that had existed in mentoring for years and provided an opportunity for virtual mentoring to step up. What virtual mentoring lacks in non-verbal cues, according to The National Institutes of Health, it gains in geographic flexibility and accessibility for a wider range of people. And that loss of in-person connection can be mitigated through intentional communication, use of video conferencing, and consistent effort from both the mentor and mentee to build a strong and supportive relationship

Rhodes began working on an A.I-enhanced platform that would step into the void, combining the flexibility of many modes of communication with the access to resources and best practices available through hundreds of pages of research. With input from her sister, a computer engineer, and support from the National Science Foundation, she designed a system that blends human-centered mentorship with A.I.’s capacity to deliver research and training in real time. As an app, it folds naturally into electronic communications. But it also serves as a genie in your pocket for information before, during, or after any kind of interactions – virtual or in-person.

MentorPRO was built in response to the shortcomings Rhodes observed in traditional mentoring. Instead of relying on casual, friendship-style interactions that may feel supportive but often fail to meet urgent needs, the platform grounds mentoring relationships in clear goals and purpose. By asking mentees to identify their priorities at the first interaction, the program helps mentors move beyond informal companionship and focus on tangible outcomes — academic progress, career readiness, or emotional wellbeing — that align with the challenges each young person experiences. This structure puts guardrails on the mentoring relationship and helps guide the partnership with growth and goals.

The first guardrail takes the form of weekly check-ins, brief surveys that ask mentees to share where they are thriving or struggling. If a mentee indicates rising distress — say, slipping into discouragement about school or career — the mentor has the chance to intervene proactively rather than react after problems escalate. 

Another key feature is the platform’s ability to capture conversations and data within the app, creating a record of interactions, challenges, and progress. Instead of relying on memory or irregular check-ins, mentors and program staff have access to a growing dataset that helps track trends, tailor support, and maintain continuity even if mentors change. This addresses one of the biggest weaknesses Rhodes identified behind the effectiveness plateau: the inability of programs to sustain quality as mentors (especially peer mentors) cycle in and out. With institutional memory embedded into the system, mentees don’t have to start over if transitions occur.

Perhaps most significantly, in Rhodes’ eyes, the program addresses the training gap that has historically limited mentors’ effectiveness. Instead of front-loading generic training that may or may not be relevant later, the app delivers on-demand, evidence-based training modules at the moment they are needed. This is Rhodes’ “rocket fuel.” If a mentee discloses trauma, attention challenges, or career anxieties, the mentor is immediately provided with concise, research-backed resources — front-loaded and trained on information from the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring — to guide the conversation. This “just-in-time” approach closes the gap between a mentor’s good intentions and actual capacity to help, transforming volunteers into skilled supporters without requiring them to become experts overnight.

Other resources synthesize useful information. Using retrieval-augmented generation models, the program scans prior conversations, mentee surveys, and local institutional resources — such as a university advising center — into short, actionable insights for the mentor. Instead of spending time trying to remember details or search for resources — like Hannah’s busy department-head mentor — mentors can focus on listening and active responses, equipped with tailored guidance automatically, without having to remember to dig later. Rhodes emphasized that the A.I. is not a replacement for human connection, but a delivery system for the research that can make it more potent. 

Rhodes emphasized that the A.I. is not a replacement for human connection, but a delivery system for the research that can make it more potent. 

“I created an 800-page training manual that curated all these studies and all the work that I think is really good, and I trained our language model on that,” she said. “It’s at the fingertips of a mentor right when they need it. It becomes this wonderful way to bring science and evidence into the conversations they are having with their mentors. And it makes relationships more effective without stripping them of authenticity.”

Beyond strengthening one-to-one mentoring, MentorPRO addresses another systemic weakness: the limited networks available to many young adults. Through social capital expansion and “flash mentoring,” the app connects mentees to short-term advisors in their communities — alumni, local employers, subject-matter experts — who can provide specialized guidance. This helps young adults build broader networks of support, a critical factor for career development and community integration that traditional programs often overlook.

In this way, Rhodes sought to address the systemic barriers that exist: inequitable access, lack of scalable training, poor continuity, and irrelevance to young adults’ real needs. By ensuring that mentors — not algorithms — remain at the center, while equipping them with timely, evidence-based tools, the platform helps bridge the mentoring gap.

The human at the helm

A recurring theme in Rhodes’ vision is the phrase “human at the helm.” At an age where bots have fallen short with disastrous results — say, reinforcing a youth’s suicidal ideation — the human at the helm has never been more critical. Rhodes draws a sharp contrast with A.I. chatbots marketed as companions. “Young people need to practice asking for help, navigating conflict, and building weak ties beyond their comfort zone. That’s how growth happens.” In this model, A.I. is not a substitute but a co-pilot — an invisible force making human mentors more effective, more present, and more scalable. 

While A.I. can streamline, summarize, and deliver evidence, only humans can offer the sacrifice, fallibility, and authentic presence that young adults crave. They can hear and support, challenge, and engage, with spontaneous pivots to humor and flashes of reciprocity and irreverence — because that’s what it is to be human and what is rewarding about human interaction. 

The MentorPRO platform is currently in place in more than 50 partnerships with higher education, youth development, and workforce development, ranging from West Point and the University of Chicago to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and City Year to Warrior Women and the National Guard Youth Challenge. MentorPRO users report that 92 percent of mentees voluntarily downloaded and used the platform; 94 percent actively engaged with it, and 87 percent said the resources helped them achieve their goals. 

Rhodes believes that structured mentoring — human relationships supported by scaffolding — can improve educational performance and workforce readiness, and wellbeing.

“Decades of research have shown that, with the right training and support, mentors and other paraprofessionals can deliver interventions just as effectively as professionals — if not more so — in ways that could help to bridge the substantial gaps in care and support,” concludes Rhodes in “The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring.” “Yet, there is a critical caveat: across all the studies comparing professionals to paraprofessionals, paraprofessionals were only effective when there was ongoing training and supervision.”