In late 2020, Coahoma Community College announced the formation of the Tiger2Tiger Mentoring Program (T2T).
The program focuses on establishing a network of committed faculty and staff members who volunteer their time to support and guide students through their college experience. The College's employees foster mentoring relationships that support students' journey towards self-reliance, successful graduation, transfer to a four-year institution, or job placement. The hope is to challenge students to work through their personal and academic challenges and build self-esteem and confidence through the pursuit of higher education.
Loria Gardner, enrollment manager, says that T2T came about through internal conversations between administrators and boots on the ground staff members. These talks identified a needed student support service that holds multiple benefits for both students and the institution.
"The mentoring program came about from a conversation on how to reach our students and keep them engaged from start to finish," said Gardner. "A few employees mentioned that CCC used to be engaged heavily in a mentoring program that utilized dedicated faculty and staff."
Institutional leadership imagined that this type of program could aid Coahoma with enrollment, retention, persistence, and graduation efforts. "We created this program to support student services, designed to assist students in making academic, career, and personal decisions. It was also created to promote the overall improvement of academic success, persistence, retention, and the graduation of students through mentoring activities and support programs that encourage academic excellence, self-esteem, and personal growth," Gardner added.
T2T is a goal-oriented program designed to support the educational and professional aspirations of Coahoma students. According to Gardner, research has proven that students who are connected to and feel comfortable at higher learning institutions are more likely to graduate from that institution. Contrarily, students who must rely on their own support networks are more likely to transfer or drop-out.
"This program is built on the philosophy that the personal connection between a mentor and mentee will support student self-advocacy, leading a determined student to graduate from Coahoma Community College," said Gardner.
Additionally, the program seeks to increase the completion of developmental courses, persistence, retention, graduation rates, and successful transfer to a four-year college and university or successful job placement.
Gardner is inspired by the group effort to develop and support the T2T initiative and is hopeful of the program's future success.
"I am overly joyed from the response that we've had in instituting the program. With a high number of our faculty and staff buying in and starting to reach out to their students, I am ecstatic that we are using our Signal Vine Text Messaging platform to reach our students via text messaging," said Gardner. "This platform also gives the mentor just enough information such as their majors, GPA's, telephone, email and mailing address so that they can successfully reach their mentees in an effective and efferent manner."
Gardner says the end result will help Coahoma Community College students feel supported by college personnel, comfortable and safe in a welcoming learning environment, and challenged and rewarded by successfully navigating the college process. The program will support the acquisition of knowledge and the journey to becoming life-long learners.
For more information about the Tiger2Tiger Mentoring Program, contact Loria Gardner, enrollment manager, at 662.621.4077 or lgardner@coahomacc.edu.