Alabama REACH, a support office for foster and homeless youth at The University of Alabama, will hold a series of lunch-and-learn events for faculty and staff interested in mentoring REACH students.
The events will be held Sept. 5, 9 and 11 in Room 333 of Russell Hall from noon to 1 p.m.
Thirty-eight students are currently active with Alabama REACH, which just onboarded 10 new transfer students and freshmen this semester, the largest class in the history of the program. These students come from various alternative living backgrounds, and many are first-generation college students who “are here blindly” and can benefit from the guidance of faculty, said Shannon Hubbard, REACH coordinator.
“We’re looking for mentors that can provide emotional and academic support to our REACH Scholars,” Hubbard said. “Having someone who can help them navigate the UA system as a whole, and knowing about resources is really helpful. This university is vast, and we can’t know about everything. So, it’s an extra level of support on campus with an extra networking component.”
Potential mentors are asked to RSVP for the event by sending an email to shannon.hubbard@ua.edu.
A faculty mentor, or “REACH Champion,” can serve various roles, from helping guide REACH students to resources on campus to providing back-to-school goody bags. Faculty can also choose to support a component of REACH, like the student pantry. The levels of connection and investment of time are completely up to the mentor and mentee, Hubbard said.
“It doesn’t have to be monetary,” Hubbard said. “Grab some coffee, go to church. Check in with them like a parent would and ask them how their test went, or how did that paper turn out?
“We also want our mentors to understand that with this population of students is not just going to open up to everything immediately. But what we would like, ultimately, is if that student needed somewhere to go for Thanksgiving dinner, that that would be a natural relationship to where they’d both feel comfortable enough to ask or accept.”
Following the three lunch-and-learn events, Alabama REACH will hold a “speed mentoring” event on Sept. 19 that will allow mentors and mentees to meet and explore commonalities and goals. REACH will then match mentors with mentees based on their preferences and connections, a departure from the program’s previous format, which relied more on surveys of interests, Hubbard said.
The lunch-and-learns will also help increase faculty awareness for other REACH eligible students on campus. Hubbard said there are 900 other students on campus that are eligible to participate but don’t, either because they don’t know about the program, or they fear being stigmatized if they reveal previous foster care or guardianship status.