Posts

For Lower-Income Students, Big Tech Internships Can Be Hard to Get

Critics say the intern selection process often favors wealthier students, just like the admission process at some elite colleges. By Natasha Singer, Reprinted from The New York Times Jalaun Ross, a computer science major at Central Connecticut State University, knew it would be difficult to land an internship at a prominent tech company this summer. […]

Study Shows a Key to Reducing Poverty: More Friendships Between Rich & Poor

By Claire Cain Miller, Josh Katz, Francesca Paris, and Aatish Bhatia, Reprinted from The New York Times Over the last four decades, the financial circumstances into which children have been born have increasingly determined where they have ended up as adults. But an expansive new study, based on billions of social media connections, has uncovered […]

Helping Behavior May Mitigate Academic Risk for Children from Low-Income Neighborhoods

Armstrong‐Carter, E., Miller, J. G., Hill, L. J. B., & Domingue, B. W. (2021). Young Children’s Prosocial Behavior Protects Against Academic Risk in Neighborhoods With Low Socioeconomic Status. Child Development, n/a(n/a). https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13549 Summarized by the Society for Research in Child Development Children raised in neighborhoods with low socio-economic status are at risk for low academic achievement. A […]

Complicated lives, complicated excuses

by Jean Rhodes I maintain an email file of the student excuses I’ve received in my 20 years as a professor at UMass Boston. Some are predictable for college students, “I spilled coke on my computer and it turned off and won’t come back on,” or “This is embarrassing but I was several pages into […]

When College students mentor high-risk youth: Two important lessons

summarized by Stella Kanchewa Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 69-78. Introduction: Credit bearing service-learning experiences for college students can mutually engender growth among students who participate within these courses and the communities they serve. Students’ experiences within these courses encourage increasing awareness of social inequities (e.g., systemic oppression, marginalization and privilege), particularly biases and […]

New research shows the link between mentoring, racial discrimination and coping efficacy

Notes of Interest: This new study is the first to examine the association between discrimination and coping efficacy and to look at how mentoring is linked to this association. By doing so, this study provides insight into, for example, potentially more effective ways to intervene and increase youth’s coping efficacy. Reference: Sánchez, B., Mroczkowski, A. […]

Youths’ belief in upward mobility challenged: New research and what mentors and programs can do

Posted by Hilary Hurd Anyaso, Futurity.org New research suggests high school and college students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds have less drive to overcome academic hardships when they harbor doubts about the odds of people with similar backgrounds achieving upward economic mobility. Three new studies extend previous research demonstrating that low-SES students who see […]

Mentoring helps youth plan for the future: New research

Lau, W. S., Zhou, X. C., & Lai, S. M. (2017). The development of mentoring‐relationship quality, future‐planning style, and career goal setting among adolescents from a disadvantaged background. PsyCh Journal, 6(1), 76-82. Summarized by Kirsten Christensen   Introduction Adolescents’ ability to plan for the future can be an important protective factor that increases life chances, promotes healthy […]

The future of mentoring: An infographic

by Jean Rhodes I recently worked with a talented team at the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network to develop an infographic on youth mentoring (below). In essence, I argue that the number of Americans willing to serve as volunteer mentors has remained remarkably stable over the past decade — between 2 million and 2.5 million, or […]

The Hidden Costs of Growing up in the Shadow of Wealth for Low-Income Children

By Candice Odgers, Ph.D. (posted on WTGrant.Org) William T. Grant Scholar Candice Odgers describes findings from her recent study, which suggests that living among affluent neighbors predicts antisocial behavior among low-income boys.   One of New York City’s newest luxury apartment buildings has just started accepting applications for low-income renters who will use what some have […]