Sacramento State’s Faculty Student Mentor Program is helping the university achieve Graduation Initiative goals by creating a support system for students.

In 2010, the CSU system launched an effort to increase graduation rates and reduce the achievement gap suffered by students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Since 1987, the Faculty Student Mentor Program shared the same mission as the Graduation Initiative. The program mainly works toward helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed at the university.

Faculty Student Mentor Program Coordinator Marie Torregrosa said the program welcomes all Sac State students but focuses on recruiting students from low-income communities, who are the first in their families to attend college.

The Faculty Student Mentor Program is lottery funded, and the university decides the dollar amount allocated to the program. In the past 25 years, the organization has not received a budget increase, although students seeking services have.

“The program has changed over the years, as the needs of the community have changed,” Torregrosa said.

Initially, the program began as a way to increase the number of underrepresented minority students at the university. After affirmative action was banned in the state funded institution, the program complied with the policy by allowing students who came from low income and first generation college backgrounds to join the program.

Today, the program through its alliance with individual departments attempts to achieve the goals of the CSU initiative, Torregrosa said.

“I have a partnership with the colleges because funding is limited. However, we use our monies resourcefully by partnering with the colleges. ”Torregrosa said. “We work together as part of the university’s net effort. Through the colleges, we meet our goals and through us they meet theirs.”

All Sac State colleges participate in the program and mentees can visit student mentors in their major departments for help on planning their schedule, looking at enrollment history and GPA, reevaluating their major and learning about university resources.

Faculty mentor of the College of Education Adriana Echandia also believes the program is distinctive because of the relationship formed between students, peer mentors and faculty.

The purpose of the faculty, and peer mentors within the colleges is to provide students with an academic support-group that can help them understand the university system. However, the relationships students build with their mentors is just as important.

“What is unique is the faculty and peer mentors working together, and this built a much stronger mentoring and advising program,” Echandia said.

She said due to her collaboration with peer mentors, they teach her as much as she teaches them and later this translates to a stronger program for the mentees.

Echandia said she helps students reach graduation by keeping the students focused on their aspirations.

“If I can keep the students focused on their goal, that keeps them going and that keeps them engaged, so they complete their bachelors,” Echandia said.

Vanessa Mendez, as a health and human services peer mentor last year, helped students explore their path in health related fields.

Pre-nursing is highly impacted at the university, and students with expressed interests in this area often visited student mentors from the Faculty Student Mentor Program, Mendez said.

Sac State’s nursing program is highly competitive, and in order to gain acceptance into the major, students must have an average GPA of 3.9.

Many students, when they visited Mendez, have a clear understanding of this requirement. By providing them with information and support helps them figure out their path towards graduation.

“Some of them are first generation (college students) so they are not aware of the resources on campus,” Mendez said. The main things for us was to serve as a mentor and provide them with as much information as we can, and (give them advice based on) our past knowledge.”

Mary McCarthy-Hintz, faculty mentor for the chemistry department, said she helps students succeed at the university by offering academic advising and advice on personal issues.

In their academics, McCarthy-Hintz guides students by informing them about campus resources, including access to student mentors made available through the Faculty Student Mentor Program.

As a mentor she understands that students have more issues in their lives than just academics. Students have to deal with other aspects of their lives, including family expectations and financial problems.

“Those who are working with the equity program are experts in the field,” Torregrosa said. “They know how to deal with this type of students.”

This program is unique because mentors are more than just academic advisers to students, but are also life coaches, McCarthy-Hintz said.

Peer mentor Gaganjot Singh relieves student’s stress by helping them figure out their academic path and helping them realize they are not the only student’s struggling. Students think their is something wrong with them when they can not graduate in four years.

“I help them understand the average student graduates in six years now, no student is really graduating within that four-year mark that most universities promote,” Singh said. “So I help them understand because that is what is stressing them out.”