Connected Futures

Connected Futures has been adapted from Connected Scholars designed by Dr. Sarah Schwartz et al. Connected Scholars (CS) was designed to address some of the disadvantages first-generation college students face by teaching them to expand their social networks and identify and engage with potential academic and career mentors. 

CS is rooted in a promising new approach to mentoring: what has been called Youth-Initiated Mentoring (YIM), which encourages youth to identify and recruit a mentor from within their existing social network. However, unlike YIM, which largely emphasizes a single, formalized mentoring relationship, CS focuses on developing the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors necessary to empower students to recruit multiple peer, academic, and professional mentors during their high school and college careers, as well as to connect with campus services and cultivate a network of relationships with staff and other professionals that can help them achieve their academic and career goals. Central to CS is a focus on practicing actual outreach and conversations/interviews with more experienced peer and professional mentors.

In addition to building off of the work of Dr. Shwartz’s work on Youth Initiated Mentoring, Connected Futures also integrates the work of the following concepts:

Social Capital:  Julia Fisher Freeland:  Who You know: Expanding Unlocking Innovations That Expand Students’ Networks