Michael Garringer

About Michael Garringer

Michael Garringer is the Director of Knowledge Management for The National Mentoring Partnership, MENTOR. Michael has played a vital role in the development of youth mentoring program supports for many years. One of the crucial roles Michael has within this field is the translation of academic research to more understandable guidance for youth mentoring programs. This includes efforts aimed at addressing the gap between research and the practical application of that research, hands-on training, and technical assistance for youth mentoring programs across the country. In addition to working on these tasks, Michael is involved in many other events within the field of mentoring: organizing the research-focused sessions at the yearly National Mentoring Summit in Washington DC and supporting the Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring at Portland State University, as well as conducting nation-wide surveys on the state of mentoring in the United States.

Entries by Michael Garringer

Let’s work together to truly bring mentoring relationships to scale

June 5, 2015/in Uncategorized/by Michael Garringer

By Michael Garringer, MENTOR, Director of Knowledge Management The recent “Real Mentoring Gap” article summarized a lot of what MENTOR has been discussing, both internally and with key external partners, since The Mentoring Effect report was released. A few quick thoughts: – While the percentage of American youth who get their mentoring solely from a […]

When is it the right time to close a struggling match?

May 16, 2015/in Mentoring Practice, Termination & Closure/by Michael Garringer

Although there are some obvious times when a mentoring match needs to end (such as a mentee moving away or a mentor seriously violating program rules), there are many other circumstances where matches fall into kind of a grey area. The mentor and mentee may not be meeting as frequently as they should or they […]

The Value of Researcher-Practitioner Conversations

April 3, 2015/in Uncategorized/by Michael Garringer

by Michael Garringer I was thrilled to see that the Chronicle had posted an announcement about the 2015 Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring this week. We are really excited at MENTOR to be partnering with Portland State University and Dr. Tom Keller in putting on this event, which will focus this year on research and […]

Linking Evidence and Practice: A Fresh Look at the Core Elements of an Increasingly Diverse Mentoring Landscape

November 12, 2014/in Contributors, Editors Blog, Podcasts/by Michael Garringer

By Mike Garringer One of the things that we like to do from time to time here at the Chronicle is to tell our readers about big new projects that might impact the way they think about or conduct their work in the future. It’s not very often that something comes along that has the […]

November 10, 2014/in Contributors/by Michael Garringer

We are delighted to welcome Mike Garringer to the editorial board of the Chronicle of Evidence-based Mentoring. Michael serves as the Director of Knowledge Management for MENTOR, overseeing projects related to the intersection of mentoring research and program practice, as well as data collection and evaluation that can highlight the prevalence and impact of mentoring around […]

FORUM: Does mentoring work in rural areas?

August 5, 2014/in Forums, Mentoring Practice/by Michael Garringer

by Mike Garringer In my time as a technical assistance provider in the youth mentoring field, some of the most difficult and persistent challenges I’ve seen are those faced by rural mentoring programs. While running a high-quality program is difficult in any town or urban environment, the challenges faced by rural programs are considerable: geographic […]

FORUM: When (and how) should mentoring programs disclose mentors’ personal information?

July 18, 2014/in Forums/by Michael Garringer

A colleague of mine recently shared an inquiry they had received from a local program that was thinking through an issue that had bubbled up: Should they tell mentees (or mentees’ parents) that a mentor is gay? And if so, why and when? This was a school-based program serving primarily younger elementary-age students and to […]

FORUM: How is your mentoring program collaborating in the community?

May 27, 2014/in K-12, Program Models/by Michael Garringer

One of the more interesting, and potentially impactful, trends in the social sector over the last few years has been the rise of “collective impact” efforts in hundreds of communities across the United States. While mentoring programs and others who work with youth and families to build resiliency and promote lifelong success have always collaborated […]

FORUM: Should mentors and mentees be “friends” on social media?

April 18, 2014/in Ethical Considerations, Mentoring Practice/by Michael Garringer

It goes without saying that social media has dramatically changed the way people interact and share their lives with others over the past decade. We now have the ability to broadcast information about ourselves to audiences at a scale that once would have seemed unimaginable. We also have the ability to carefully curate a “public” […]

POLL: Does your program have a fully-developed theory of change?

March 19, 2014/in Forums/by Michael Garringer

Recently I’ve been thinking about a “disconnect” that I often see in the mentoring field: the difference between what programs say they can achieve through mentoring and what they actually do in practice. Now, most mentoring programs can obviously give a reasonable description of the goals of their program and some explanation of what mentors […]

About Michael Garringer

Entries by Michael Garringer

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