Cabrini University helps its students in many ways. But one unique way is through the mentoring of first-generation students.
Some students at Cabrini are the first people in their family to attend or graduate college.
Associate director of the first-year experience, Saleem Brown, took it into his own hands about two years ago to help these student feel acclimated to their new environment.
“I started a program called ‘Cav Cares.’ In that program, incoming freshmen, a first-year student, will receive an upperclassman mentor. That mentor will meet with them once a week in person, and then once again at the end of the week either via email or in person. So, they receive contact from an upperclassman twice a week, just helping them get adjusted to the campus, showing them offices to go to and helping them out with understanding their syllabi. For any questions they might have, they have an upperclassman mentor,” Brown said.
The help and guidance offered to these students even goes beyond their mentor.
“At the end of each month, we will meet with our first-generation students one-on-one, just to make sure they’re good, and they’re comfortable on campus. Any questions that the mentor couldn’t answer maybe I can answer,” Brown said. “And then, we meet once a semester for a nice dinner, a get together, where we all come together and we just talk about the semester, talk about the relationships with the mentors.”
Every first-generation student, who chooses to be a part of the program, are with their upperclassman mentor for their entire first year. Beyond student mentors, first-generation students have access to different faculty and staff members that are involved with “Cav Cares.”
“They have staff and professors on campus that they can go to. Being a first-generation student, you really need someone who you can trust and believe in that’s going to tell you the right thing. That’s how this program originated. Giving them a contact, and a consistent contact, for them to lean on,” Brown said.
First-generation students not only deal with the pressure that comes with college, but they also balance any pressure that comes from their family.
“Being the first to go to college is scary because I don’t want to be a drop out or become a failure to my parents and become just an average Hispanic coming to America to work for little pay and long hours. There is a lot of pressure,” sophomore accounting major Michael Bonilla said.
“There’s so much coming at you, and there’s so much pressure on you. Being the first to go to college, which is a big feat in itself to just get into college, but now you’re the first one in your family. Now everyone who might have missed that opportunity is kind of relying on you and is living their dreams through you,” Brown said.
This program is helping students every year and is looking to grow as the years go on.
“I’ve seen a lot progress through them. In the first year, it started, those students who came in as mentees wanted so bad to be a mentor. And, a student who was a mentor the first time this program was ever run wanted to be a mentor again. It’s an unpaid position, this is time that they could be doing something else, but they’re giving it to this program – right there that shows growth, but you’re also helping someone else along in their first year,” Brown said. “If anyone wants to be a mentor or if anyone knows a first-generation student coming to Cabrini, send them my way because I want to help them.”
