Multicultural Student Mentor Program (MSMP)

To help integrate first-year multicultural college students into the college environment, the Office of Minority Affairs established MSMP in 1988 as a retention strategy to welcome and help incoming students in their transition and adjustment to the university environment. MSMP focuses on improving multicultural student retention rates by providing mentoring, tutoring, and academic success workshops to students. This program has been helpful for both the students and the institution. The program provides mentors with excellent leadership experience, and mentees with a strong peer connection while increasing the university’s retention rates. Over the last 30 years, the program has become one of the most solid university retention strategies for multicultural students and one of the best practices of students serving students. The program has also experienced significant growth in the number of mentors from their initial 6 to now 60. The support, training, and guidance of the mentors has also evolved greatly with the establishment of training retreats and a class dedicated to learning mentoring theory and praxis. Each academic year, over 1300 first-year multicultural students participate as mentees in this program and a university commitment to the program has increased over the years.