Entries by Jean Rhodes

OJJDP releases new grant solicitations

OJJDP continues to take the lead in funding ground breaking mentoring research and services. Below is a list of the most recent, a review that might be helpful in preparing applications.   Practitioner-Researcher Partnership Mentoring Children   Deadline: May 27, 2014 “This demonstration program will support a practitioner-researcher partnership to develop and evaluate new mentoring […]

Mentors Help Create A Sustainable Pipeline For Women In STEM

by Bonnie Marcus Women make up about half of the workforce in America, but they only represent 24% of the workforce in STEM fields. Why should we care? First and foremost, this statistic calls attention to an untapped potential; talent that we need in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in order to remain competitive from […]

How an Innovative Youth Program is Tackling Mass Incarceration

By DAX-DEVLON ROSS Nine years ago Molly Baldwin found herself in a curious position. Roca, the teenage pregnancy and violence prevention program she’d founded in her 20s, had a multimillion-dollar budget, a two-story building in downtown Chelsea, Mass., a portfolio of programs addressing everything from poverty to immigrant rights and a measure of fame for using Native […]

News Flash: Boys and Girls Take Different Paths to Empathy

Van der Graaff, J., Branje, S., De Wied, M., Hawk, S., Van Lier, P. & Meeus, W. (2014). Perspective taking and empathic concern in adolescence: Gender differences in developmental changes. Developmental Psychology, (3), 881-888. doi: 10.1037/a0034325 By Tara Kuther Empathy, the capacity to take another person’s perspective and appreciate their emotion, is thought to increase over […]

Mentoring programs needed!

March 4, 2014: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a $1.09 million research grant to Dr. Janis Kupersmidt, Senior Research Scientist, and Dr. Rebecca Stelter, Research Scientist, at innovation Research & Training, and Dr. Jean Rhodes, Professor and Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, to develop and evaluate […]

Pedro Noguera: Why students need more than ‘grit’

By Pedro A. Noguera and Anindya Kundu Recently, “grit” has received growing attention from educators and others as the critical ingredient to academic success. Given our nation’s admiration for the rugged individual, it is understandable why we choose to glorify guts and grit. However, it is less clear why the idea has become such a […]

New study shows important pathway to mentor commitment

Gettings, P.E. & Wilson, S.R. (2014). Examining commitment and relational maintenance in formal youth mentoring relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 1-27, DOI: 10.1177/0265407514522145. summarized by Stella Kanchewa, M.A., UMass Boston doctoral student.   Background: Previous studies (e.g., Grossman et al. 2012; Grossman & Rhodes, 2002) have established the formation of an enduring relationship […]

Adolescents Prefer More Immediate Rewards When in the Presence of their Peers

 O’Brien, L., Albert, D., Chein, J., & Steinberg, L. (2011). Adolescents prefer more immediate rewards when in the presence of their peers. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21(4), 747-753. Summarized by Carol Lee, University of Massachusetts Boston Clinical Psychology Graduate Student Introduction: Researchers have found that adolescents are more likely to engage in risky behaviors […]