Bryant students volunteer with College Crusade of Rhode Island

Management 200 group recruits 36 Bryant students to be e-mentors to help high school students prepare for college.

The service learning project that Jorge Beron ’09 (Providence, RI) completed for an introductory management course had a special significance to him. It not only gave him an opportunity to see management principles in action, it was also a chance for him to give back to the community.

As part of Management Lecturer John Poirier’s Management 200 class (Practices and Principles), Beron led a group of students who worked with the College Crusade of Rhode Island, an educational nonprofit that offers programs for elementary and middle school students and helps prepare high school students for college.

Beron knows firsthand how this program can motivate students to do well in school and encourage them to go to college because he is a College Crusade graduate. He started with the program in the third grade and continued until his graduation from high school. He earned a scholarship from College Crusade of Rhode Island and now works with the organization’s Crusades Adventures and Academic Program, an initiative to help middle school students build problem solving skills.

“Now that I reflect and look back, I wonder what I would have done without my College Crusade advisor reminding me about the steps to take to get to college,” says Beron.

The “E Crew” team of Beron, Jonathan Gauthier ’09 (Warwick, RI), Mike Howe ’09 (Douglas, MA), Jerry Laguerre ’08 (Stoughton, MA), Elizett Pires ’09 (New Bedford, MA), and Nicole Shaw ’09 (Warwick, Bermuda) helped recruit 36 Bryant students to serve as e-mentors.

Through the program, volunteers stay in contact with high school students via e-mail to talk about college preparation or everyday issues that come up. The mentor is able to give tips and encouragement to help students do well in school.

“I hope that the students I work with as part of the e-mentoring program are motivated to stay in school and try their best,” says Beron.

Pires believes that helping people gives them the encouragement they need to be successful.

“I think that mentoring can have a big impact on students and makes them more willing to do things for others,” she says. “It ends up being a chain reaction of people helping people.”

For Howe, projects like this allow him to make a positive impact on the community. He also works with Bryant’s Students in Free Enterprise Organization (SIFE), which is conducting a program to teach business skills to students at the Rhode Island Training School.

These service learning projects allow students to take classroom learning and put it in action and help an organization to run more efficiently and effectively.

“I want students to apply management tools and practices to their projects while learning more about the impact they can have helping others,” says Poirier. “I hope they also discover some processes that lead to better team effectiveness.”