Untitled - August 7, 2026

00:00:00 Speaker: Welcome to At Scale the Tennessee Achieves podcast. I'm Chrissy de Alejandro. Tennessee achieves president and CEO. Tennessee Achieve seeks to be humble but ambitious, disruptive yet intentional and student focused while also data driven. We believe our mission is simple enhance post-secondary opportunities and outcomes by providing holistic student supports rooted in community and accountability at scale. But the work is much more complex. Since two thousand and eight, we've broken some things in a great way. We've built many things, and we've created something that stems from the idea that a college credential can be a powerful equalizer. From helping individual students navigate the complexities of college to shaping the way Tennessee thinks about preparing and educating tomorrow's workforce, this podcast explores how Tennessee achieves intersects with partners across our state and throughout the country. Let's dig in with state and national partners, business and industry leaders, college and K-12 representatives, and all the others in between that inform, inspire and interconnect with Tennessee achieves work. Here we go. Hi. Welcome back to the Tennessee Achieves at Scale podcast. Today is a little bit of a special episode. It's back to school season for us. And our Tennessee achieves mentor application actually opened last week. So we thought we would have a special edition of the At Scale podcast that focused on the mentoring program. I think a lot of our listeners either are mentors, have been a mentor before or could be a mentor. So we wanted to really dig into what it means to be a Tennessee achieves mentor, what that program, why we created the program to begin with, um, kind of how it's evolved to meet student needs. Um, and Tennessee achieves Priorities over the years. And then we're going to wrap it up by talking about what a mentor really does in twenty twenty six twenty twenty seven. This episode is going to be a little different because it's going to be segmented, where instead you don't just have Graham and I talking at you for forty minutes, it's going to change around and we'll have different people hop on as they would talk about their expertise around the mentoring program as it stands today. Um, Graham welcome back. Yeah, excited to be here. You know, I think this is the thing that like, we're, we're the most well known for like, we go out, you talk about Tennessee cheese and people are like, oh, that's that mentoring program or like, oh, I've gotten your one thousand emails. And I was like, yes, I'm the man behind the emails. I'm a real person. There's, um, I don't get it as much anymore. Tyler Baylor probably get that now, but for so many years ran the mentor program, um, a key pillar of the work that we do and is excited to talk about it today. Yeah, I am too. And I'm glad that you and I get to kick this off because, um, when I started working at Tennessee achieves in twenty fourteen. My first job was to help with the mentor program. So it's kind of come full circle here for us to talk about what it was like back then and what we were trying to accomplish with the mentoring program then. I don't think it's really changed all that much up to this point. But, um, Graham, let's talk about to start like when we launched as an organization in two thousand and eight, you were around then. Um, and I was a student in the program then why was it so important for us to have a mentoring program? You know, we were looking at scholarship programs around the country, and so much of it was focused on the financial need that students face. And we certainly knew then, and we know now that our students face a financial need. Um, but what we were seeing was that a lot of times when programs were simply financial, um, you were just incentivizing students that were already going or providing additional funding for students that were already going. And you weren't really putting, uh, a whole lot of new students into the pipeline, and our goal at then is now Tennessee achieves. Has always been to put a new student in the in the pipeline. And historically, the students that have been left out of the pipeline in Tennessee come from lower income households, and they tend to be the first person in their family to go to college. And so as we were really thinking about how to put this program together in a way to best serve that population of student, we knew that if no one in your family had ever been to college before, you were facing a really daunting task. Um, it was a whole new set of vocabulary. It was new terms. Um, it was a process that, you know, frankly, can be really intimidating when you start talking about the Fafsa. Uh, families get scared and intimidated by it. And we were able to have advocates across the community that were saying like, hey, do this long, crazy, complicated financial form, and then you get to go to college tuition free. And, uh, and one of the really great things about it kind of fast forwarding almost twenty years later. Um, we've built this network of more than one hundred thousand higher ed advocates across Tennessee. Now that you know otherwise may not have been engaged in the process. Um, but we knew then, and we know now that the non-financial support of a mentor, um, is a critical piece of this puzzle. The financial piece oftentimes, uh, is the incentive. It gets students excited when you walk into a high school eighteen years ago, you walk into a high school today and you say tuition free college, like the ears perk up. Um, that catches their attention. Um, but just throwing money at this was never going to work. Um, and so we knew that we needed to support students in a non-financial way. And eighteen years ago that looked like about one hundred and sixty five volunteers in Knox County, uh, working with almost five hundred students, uh, Ben, of which you were one, right? Yeah. Um, I think One of the coolest parts of our mentoring program is that it's always been available to every student. Um, and I think that's actually what makes Tennessee achieves really cool in general is that it's not just for a certain population of students. Um, because I was a unique, I came from a unique situation where, um, I was a first generation college student, but I wouldn't have qualified for the need based aid. So if I, if this was really targeted at a student population that was just based on need based aid, then I would have missed out on that opportunity to have a mentor, which was critical to my trajectory. Um, and so just because a student doesn't fall into a certain bucket doesn't mean that they don't know what they're doing. And so I think being able to open this up to every student in the program, and it's an option for them. And for many years, every student was paired automatically. Um, we'll talk about why they're not now, but, um, it just provides that layer of support for a student who even on paper, you maybe think they've, they've got the support that they need. But my parents had no clue what was going on with the college process, even though, um, I think on paper you maybe thought that they would have. And so that is something that I think the mentoring program exemplifies something that's a bigger story at Tennessee achieves, which is we want to provide this opportunity to every student because you don't always know what's going on, um, behind the scenes. And so the mentor is always somebody to kind of stand in that gap for them. Uh, this is a kind of a fun trip down memory memory lane for me. It's a little bit nostalgic because back in the day, we used to do, um, in-person mentor trainings. So people that are mentoring today, it's all virtual. We figured that out and we'll talk a little bit about that transition from, um, very much an in-person experience to a virtual experience, um, really driven by the pandemic. But, um, back in the day when we did those in-person trainings, I, I really enjoyed getting that interface with our volunteers because you could really level set with them about what this experience looks like and what an actual mentoring experience can be. There's often this misconception. Um, and I think we maybe planted this seed on our own for a long time in that, uh, there was this misconception that if you signed up to be a Tennessee achieve mentor, you were going to be paired with this student who just had all the odds against them. And that because you were paired with them, they have this magical Disney moment on the other side. Sometimes that does happen not often. Um, normally the support comes in smaller wins than that. Um, but what we know is you build small wins on top of each other and students will benefit from that. Um, and so I think I wanted to spend some time in this episode talking about, um, what it's actually like to be a Tennessee achieve mentor from an expectations perspective. Um, because I think it's, it's, it can always be frustrating if you sign up for something and have it in your mind that it's going to be one thing. And then once you get into it and you experience isn't quite what you had in mind. Uh, so Graham, I think you're probably the best person to talk about this. You've had this conversation with volunteers for a long time. So let's have a little bit of a conversation around that. Yeah. But you talked about that opportunity to pair every student with a mentor. So today for us, that looks like approximately sixty five thousand students every single year that have an opportunity to have the opportunity to work with and mentor on the access side, and then another twenty or twenty five thousand that are now have the opportunity on the workforce side. And Tyler, they're going to talk a little bit more about the two different programs later, but with that comes some challenges. Um, especially those of you that are maybe listening to this, that mentored several years ago when we were pairing every single student with a mentor, the opportunity was huge. We could give sixty five thousand students, a person in their community to go to bat for them, to remind them of their deadlines, uh, and to encourage them through this process. I still think that's the most important part is the encouragement piece. Uh, but I think we, we went around and, you know, there's a story that always sticks out in my head. We had a student this was in Blount County in the early days, a student named Virginia. Her mentor was named Laura. Laura was a retired educator. We asked our mentors for one hour a month, and in one hour a month you can be a really effective. Tennessee achieves mentor and you can help a student find their way on a college campus. But Ben, to your point, you're probably not going to have the Disney moment, as you just called it. You're not going to have this. Like if you're only putting in an hour, investing an hour a month in a student, you're not going to build this strong, like incredible relationship. And so we used to talk about Laura in Virginia, and Laura did way more than one hour a month. And we told the story of Virginia grad, I think Virginia graduated from college four times. She was older than all of her college graduates. And we were we were sharing the story everywhere. And then our mentors were volunteering and they're like, this is not the experience. And know for most of our mentors, that is not going to be the experience. Right? Um, you might find it to be, uh, rather transactional student is reaching out in these pivotal little points, like, I need help with this thing, and you don't hear from them for a while, and they need help with this thing, and you don't hear from hear from them for a while. Or you, you get them through one hurdle and then like, that's all that they needed. Or they're checking in, you know, periodically. Um, but what we know is like, especially in the times where our mentors are working with like seven or eight students, like if we gave you seven students and you got one student to college that wasn't going to go before they met you. That is a huge win. We got back in those days, it was nine thousand volunteers a year. Today it's five thousand volunteers a year. Think about that. If every one of those mentors just got one student to college that wasn't going to go before, huge win. And the other thing, I think that our mentors were really kind of selling themselves short on was they would get seven students and let's say, uh, one would use Tennessee Promise and three would go to a university and then maybe one or two, one would go to the military, one would find something, an apprenticeship or something to do, and they'd be like, man, I only got one out of seven. Like, I'm a failure as a mentor. Like, well, no, because you're three that went to a university are setting themselves up to be successful, right? The goal of our program, I'm coming to you from Nashville today, so I'll use a Nashville example, but the goal of our program, Overton High School, is right around the corner here. The goal of the program isn't to go work with the student Overton that wants to go to Mtsu or Austin Peay or TSU and be like, no, no, no, go to Nashville State. That is not the goal of the program. That student wants to go to Mtsu. Well, let's help that student go to Mtsu and then celebrate that. That is a win. That student has set him or herself up to be successful. And so it is about working with one student at a time, meeting that student, wherever they are in this process, making sure they're meeting those deadlines, making sure that they're making progress towards college. Now, can you invest significantly more time than one hour a month into students? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes you will have that student. But working with a couple of students and getting them over the, over those hurdles, um, sometimes that small little, uh, text message or that three minute conversation saves them and gets them on campus. And so that's what we're asking for. Um, and I think for many years, like we didn't do a good job of setting that expectation. And yeah, so sold a program maybe to people that, um, just wasn't, it's not what they were finding to be the experience. Um, and so want to really be honest that the experience now you're working with a couple of students in your community. Um, and we're just asking you to help us, help us, um, get the sixty five thousand students on a college campus somewhere, anywhere. Yeah, yeah, I, I always like to close mentor trainings, um, by talking about how you measure success as a mentor, because if you measure your success based on a student's either communication or even their really their outcome, it can it can be a a losing game for you because you don't always know what happens with them because they either aren't communicative or they were and now they're not. Or it, it can be hard to measure your success on that. And I've always said that mentors should measure their success on how they show up. And if you are available, when a student reaches out and you, you return their communication, you're consistent in your outreach to them and you're an encourager. When the times are hard for a student, that's how you really can measure your success. And, and to me that if you look at the the formula, it works because having somebody in a student's corner makes makes a huge difference. Now that we've talked about why mentors were part of the original formula of Tennessee achieves and kind of what it looks like to serve as a volunteer. I wanted to bring Tyler Ford in to talk a little bit about the trajectory of the mentor program over the last five to seven years, because I think that's really influenced where we are today, why we've made some of the changes that we've made, um, where we are today. And I really also wanted to dig into the community aspect of this and really why I think this mentor program has been such a special part of the work that we've done at Tennessee achieves. But Tyler has, uh, once I stopped managing the mentor program, Tyler took that over. So I'm going to allow him to introduce himself and talk a little bit about, um, his experience mentoring, uh, working with the mentor program. And then we can dig into, um, that transition that we've kind of gone through. Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Um, so I, uh, had the privilege, I guess, of starting at Tennessee achieves way back in twenty eighteen. Um, and at the time I joined Ben and Graham's team, um, really just helping to administer the mentor program. And what was fun about that is, is someone who at the time brand new to Tennessee. Um, it really was an opportunity to connect with great people across the state, visit communities across the state and learn this work and this, these communities from the ground up. And it's been, um, one of the great joys, I guess, to get to do this for the past eight years and to get the, as we'll talk about, see the program change, transition and adapt, um, to meet student needs. But also, I mean, as we're going to touch on to meet some broader challenges that we would assume with Covid and some of those changes. Yeah, the community aspect of this is just has been so fun. I mean, I would have never guessed that I'd visit almost every, if not every county in Tennessee, um, connecting with people that I never would have met. Uh, it truly, especially early on when this was very much an in-person experience, you just went to counties that you never would have visited towns. You never would have visited, visited with people you never would have met. But because of this shared belief that students deserve to have someone in their corner. You just built this network. And fast forward today, we've recruited over one hundred thousand mentors, and it's just always been it's, it's such a, a beautiful bridge between communities and education that for so long, there's been a gap between what businesses and organizations and even local governments and those sorts of entities and their engagement with, particularly this post-secondary transition from high school to college. And there's just not always been a bridge there. And that's mentoring program to me, it's what made it makes our model really special is that when we're in a community, it's not just Tennessee. If she's doing the work, and we certainly don't take credit for that, what what's actually happening is that people from all walks of life are engaging in this discourse and this conversation that we're having about students going to college. And the byproduct of that is that you've got communities that really learn to support these college going efforts in a way that they never have before. I think of counties like Jefferson County, for example, where we've worked there since about two thousand eleven, twenty twelve, and that county, the expectation is that you apply for Tennessee Promise and that tons of people from the school system and local government and businesses are volunteering as mentors. There's been years where we have an overabundance of mentors in that county, and it's like, how and how would this have ever happened had it not been for really, I think, Tennessee mentors. That's really the origin for a lot of these, these local efforts to get students to go to college. Well, I mean, you know, and we have always said that, you know, while this work is is big at scale, you know, Graham said in the earlier segment, we're working with sixty five thousand students and that that's true. But it is also true that we serve currently sixty seven counties and to serve a student in, uh, you know, uh, Fentress County, uh, or to serve a student in Madison County, you really do have to take a grassroots approach to meet that student where they're at. And that's where the community piece comes into play. It has always been, um, for us as a, as Tennessee achieves, but, but specifically, I think with this mentor program, uh, about going into communities, finding those community champions, but also finding individuals who, like you talked about earlier, have an hour per month and just want to invest a little bit of time in local students to help them succeed. Because what students need across the state is different. Um, you know, their career interests look different. Whether they want to go to a tcat or a community college may look different. And the, the best people to support those students are people who live down the street from them. people who they might see at a basketball game or, um, a local community event and they can check in, you know, that to me and you touched on this, Ben has always been the power of this volunteer program. You know, our team at Tennessee achieves can can send a lot of emails. Um, we are good at sending emails. We can convey the information that students need to know and track deadlines, track requirements. Um, but the thing that we can like absolutely never replace is the community encouragement that our volunteer mentors offer. And so there will never be a day that you don't see us framing the volunteer mentor program and this give back piece as a community based effort because, um, even as the programs changed, as we'll talk about here in a minute, um, community has always been at the forefront of that. It has, the local aspect of this is so critical and it's stories like when a mentor says that they go to a coffee shop and their student is the barista at their coffee shop in their in their town. And Mike, that we would never have that experience because, you know, we don't live in sixty seven counties. And I think that it even if it was possible for us to have a representation, every county, I think the the volunteer component of this is just that much more powerful than having like somebody from Tennessee in every county, because these are the people that live and work and, um, their, their lives are deeply embedded in sometimes, you know, born and raised and have generations of family that are from these counties. And, um, they know these students, they know these students parents in some cases. And it's just this community wide effort to, to rally around groups of students to get them to make good decisions when they graduate from high school. And I think communities as a whole can agree that that's a good idea. And we love to be able to provide that that Infrastructure to be able to do that. I, you and I could talk about this all day because I, I got one other thing I want to say here. Um, I was at a community event not too terribly long ago and I ran into a mentor and, um, I hadn't seen this mentor in quite a while and she said, oh my goodness, I have had a great time with my student this year. I actually just the other day, um, took her over to a friend's office to help her job shadow at a local news station. Um, and two things there. One, I love those moments because they only happen when we're out in the community. We run into those mentors and we hear those impact stories. And I think, um, that was one of the hard things about that Covid window is we weren't doing that quite as much. Yeah. Um, but the second thing that I wanted to touch on with that is mentorship is not just about the volunteer giving back their time. Oftentimes what we see is it's the, it's the mentor capitalizing on their local network as well to help add layers of support for that student. And that's why I love that this has always been community based. It's because for every volunteer that we get into the pipeline, uh, it is very possible, um, that there's two or three other community members who at some point are kind of plugging in to support that student. Again, that's not always the case, but I think mentorship at its best is really the community rallying around students. And that's something really special. Absolutely. And that's something that I wish we had zeroed in on this earlier when we talked about our mentoring program, uh, in our existence. I mean, and it's something that we really talk about now. And, um, even when a student is in high school, they need help cultivating a network of people in their communities because you just never know which one of those relationships is going to turn into a hiring opportunity, right? And who knows what the student, our students change their minds about what they want to do about once a week when they're in college. It can, and it can really swing from being an accountant to a history teacher to a wildlife biologist, all within a semester. And none of those things are really connected. Um, and by just helping them build out that network, it oftentimes helps them begin to understand what they want their life after college to be. And so the mentoring component can always be a networking opportunity if the student is engaged in my mind, that's, that's something that every mentor can bring to the table because we all don't, we don't live in silos. We know people. And so it's this ability to connect a student who doesn't in many cases, know, know anyone in the in the workforce, there's a good chance that they don't have any interaction with professionals in their community. And there's this chance to make those connections for them. And I'll add to going back to the initial segment where we were talking about the, you know, some of the Disney stories, right? The magical idea of what mentorship can be. I certainly have heard from mentors as we've grown the program and adapted it to a workforce model, which we'll talk about here in a minute, that students are more interested in networking opportunities, and they are connecting them with their own professional networks in that sense. But sometimes this does just look like a student reaching out and saying, hey, I'm thinking about these two different career fields. What do you know about them? Um, and you provide a little bit of context. You provide what you know, and then the student says, great, I'm going to be an engineer that that helped make the decision or whatever, whatever it may be. It's not necessarily always going to be that expansive network creation for a student. However, to Ben's point, some students just need someone they can bounce ideas off of, talk through. They might not have that person in their life. And that's where, again, even just having that one mentorship connection can really move the needle and help a student to feel a little bit of wind in their sails as they go through the college and career process. Absolutely. It's a critical component of this. And, um, really speaks to this evolution of the program that we've alluded to a couple of times when we started this program, it was very much focused on just getting a student from high school to college. Uh, and then when I just, when I thought we had really figured that out and we could start innovating, the pandemic happened in twenty twenty and upended what I thought was just an incredibly solid, uh, volunteer experience that was very much deeply rooted in in-person interaction. So then as that in-person interaction becomes unavailable, we're like, well, we know students still need help. How do we get a mentor to a student? And we tried a lot. We have a value here at Tennessee achieves try, try a lot of things and keep what works. And we tried some things that worked during those years time in twenty twenty to twenty twenty two, we tried some things that didn't work. I was going to say, I think if memory serves me right, that I stepped into a role managing the mentor program in late February or early March of twenty twenty. Um, and that was quite the time to do so because to your point, we, I'll say this, um, if you are tuning into this webinar and you're considering joining or tuning into this podcast and you're considering joining us as a mentor, but specifically if you've been a mentor with us for the past six, seven, eight, nine, ten years, you have seen some changes over the years. And what I love about it is it is that value of try. We've continued to put students first and really everything we've done, um, you know, if we're being candid during a global pandemic with an in-person based mentorship program, it would have been really easy to pack it in and say it doesn't work. Um, we shifted the program virtually. Um, and we have kept a lot of that same sort of process system in place ever since then. Um, because of, you know, a couple reasons. One, I think it's, it's served mentors. Well, um, you know, at the end of the day, now it's a little bit easier to connect with a student, um, one on one and have an in depth conversation with them. Two. It's also allowed us to branch into things like workforce mentorship that in person would not have necessarily facilitated. And so, um, yeah, certainly during those Covid years, there were some periods of transition. Um, there were some, um, long nights getting online platforms set up and things like that. But it's led to where we are today, which is a state wide mentorship model that continues to allow us to impact students where they're at, both in the college search process, but also in their pathway to the workforce through workforce mentorship. Yeah, a lot of those lessons learned during that time when it was it was difficult in some cases, to try to figure out how to provide a meaningful experience for a mentor that's remote. Um, I think a lot of the things that we learned during that time, though, have influenced where we are today. And I think we have a program that is, um, is still very much a virtual experience, but it's connected, it's intentional. Um, and we've innovated in a lot of ways to enhance that experience. While you can do in-person experiences with your student, it doesn't have to be. And so it allows somebody who who travels a lot for work, and it is hard for them to volunteer because most volunteer, especially mentoring experiences, do require in person. And so we have this opportunity for someone who is a busy professional to give back to their communities and in many cases, change the trajectory for students. Okay, so let's pivot to talking a little bit about this transition. And then we will sort of wrap this segment up. But one of the things that I love about Tennessee achieves, and it's, it's bled into this mentoring experience is that we are always listening to students. Um, we're observing their outcomes. We're analyzing our current programs, looking for gaps, trying to figure out what is it that students need today that maybe they, they weren't telling us or, or the needs have changed over the years? Um, one of the things that Tyler said this already, but we spend a lot of emails and we are, at the end of the day, an incredible communication Organization. I say that because I don't do a lot of the communication. I look at our team that does, and it's unbelievable how well oiled that machine is. And we're able to communicate with students and it feels very targeted, and we're able to do it at a scale that I don't know that any other nonprofit in the country does. And so it because of that, what we found is that that communication and that the strategy around that to either inform the student, the parent or the other adult in their life, whether that's a school counselor or somebody at the college had really created this environment that once a student applies for Tennessee promise, they're going to be informed about the milestones that that they need to complete to get to college. And for some students, that was enough. And I think that's why for a lot of mentors, they would receive a group of students and they couldn't find a way to engage with a student because all five of them found that the this, this environment of communication that we'd created, plus the, you know, the ability to educate their school counselors and things that the mentor just kind of wasn't. They didn't see the need. We know they need the mentor, but they didn't see the value of it. So it, it ended up in this situation where mentors were trying to reach out to students that at the end of the day, were never going to be responsive. Um, so we pivoted a couple years ago to allowing students to opt in to, to working with a mentor. Um, and this has been, I think one of the best decisions that we've ever made in the mentoring program. Because now you're taking the student who is asking to work with a mentor and, um, placing them with somebody in their community, as we've already gone over that is going to stand in the gap for them and that since they've asked for this help, obviously they're going to be more responsive. Um, Tyler, I think I want you to speak to this, this idea that when we first launched this and I went to pitch it in communities, there was this overwhelming sentiment that we were going to somehow exclude the student who needs the mentor the most, right? By giving this opt in model, the student who needs the mentor the most is going to be the student who gets left behind. That's not the case at all. And we look at the data and it tells us that. Right? Yeah. I mean, we see that, um, you know, the students who end up requesting a mentor, um, it a pretty significant margin end up being more financially at risk right, than their peers who are not working with a mentor. Um, and it has always been our belief, um, that, you know, the students who will benefit from community based mentorship is perhaps a first generation low income student, right? And so to see in the data that those students are still gravitating towards this community based support tells us that, um, you know, we can continue down that path, right. Um, and what I love about that pivot that we made a few years back is we spent a lot of time, um, five, six, seven years ago telling mentors, we're going to give you a list of seven to ten students. Um, and five of them are not going to respond. Again, being honest, we hope a couple of them do. Exactly. Um, and I think that in a program where there was a little bit of in-person connection still, that that was a feasible model, right? Because you saw him face to face, we could get that read on them early on as we've shifted into this virtual model. I think it's so important that we continue to do that legwork of saying, here are the students who want the help on the front end so that as a mentor, you're not running around pulling your hair out saying, where's this student? Where's that student? I haven't heard from them. Now you've got a bit more of a solid foundation to go off of. I'll say to, you know, in the interest of, um, you know, an honest conversation around mentoring, if you get three students who have opted in, it's not to say that all three of them are still going to be highly responsive and highly engaged. One of those students may just want someone again, they can text when they've got a quick question, they can text when they need a little bit of help, and that's okay. Our idea has always been Then let's cast a wide net. Let's offer this up to every student that might want a little bit of help in the idea that even getting one student across that finish line into, you know, one of these post-secondary institutions across the state is a needle moved for a student, for a family, for a community. Um, and it's a huge impact made by a mentor. Absolutely. It, it, to me, it really concentrates the mentors impact where, um, there may be this, this idea that because the students aren't working with a mentor, that they're just hung out to dry, which is not the case. We have wraparound supports and we have other podcast episodes that dig into those. And if we don't, we're going to record some like this one that dig into the nuts and bolts of our work. And, um, because I think it's important to know that students, even if they're not working with a mentor, they're, they're receiving a complete coach and they're, um, they have access to complete grants and they're getting this proactive communication and they have access to summer programs, prepare them for the fall. And it's just this whole, um, this system of programs that are designed to help students and the mentor program is, is just part of that. Um, so as we wrap this segment up, we're in the next segment. We're going to talk more about the, the, where we are today. What is the mentor program look like today? Um, I'm going to, I'm going to hand the reins over to Tyler for the next segment. He's going to bring in our new, um, director of mentors, uh, Baylor to talk about what the mentoring program is in twenty twenty six, why we've added a workforce mentoring program, which I think for a lot of people has been a breath of fresh air. People who have mentored for almost twenty years gave them something else to do at Tennessee Cheese, which for a lot of people, I think was really, really nice. So, um, I appreciate everybody that listens to the podcast and I hope you enjoy the next segment. All right. And we're continuing on now with this series on Tennessee achieves mentorship and its changes over the years and the opportunities we have as we move ahead with Baylor. Joining us to share a little bit about the program as it exists in twenty twenty six and what we're looking forward to as we move ahead into twenty twenty seven. Baylor, thanks for hopping on today. Absolutely. I'm excited to be here. It's my first time on the podcast. Well first time. How exciting. Uh, you well, there we go. Um, so I'd love to hear from your perspective, kind of some broader context here. Um, within the past two or three years, Baylor has stepped in and started leading the mentor program. Um, and kind of handed the reins over to her. And this has been what I would say a really exciting and transformative time for the Tennessee achieves mentoring program because of some of these new opportunities that we're offering to students and mentors in the community engagement space. Baylor, can you tell us a little bit about what the programs look like over the past year, and some of these new opportunities that we've got? Absolutely, like everybody's alluded to in the past, We've been doing this for almost eighteen years now. Mentors have been a part of Tennessee programming. Um, and we have seen great success with that. Students getting to college, um, and having that extra layer of support. However, over the past few years, we've noticed a gap. So students have a ton of support as they're going from high school into college. Once they're in college, they have many support systems. Tennessee achieves their college. There's a lot of people reaching out to them. Um, but once they graduate, kind of all of that support dissipates. And so we wanted to offer a program where students could have support as they take that next step into their, a new phase of life. Um, a very scary one for a lot of people. I know that when I graduated back in twenty twenty, now, um, a scary time to graduate anyways, but it was so nerve wracking trying to find a job, putting my resume out there. I didn't know what my next step was. I have this college degree, but I did not really know what I wanted to do with it, and it would have been so impactful to have somebody talk me through that, help me figure out how to make a resume, how to do job interviews. Um, and I had to figure that out on my own. So we have added in this new workforce mentorship program where mentors can help students as they navigate those next steps into their career and into the workforce as well. And so we have seen great success in that space. Um, this past year was our first year with the Workforce Mentor program. And as the first year of any program goes, there's always some bugs and some tweaks that you need to make. But we have seen mentors and students connect in at a great rate, um, and mentors really getting to make an impact in a student's life, whether that be in a huge way or a small way. So we've had mentors connect students with the job and we, we've also had mentors just help students make a resume or help them figure out how to interview for a job. And all of those things have been super impactful for students as they navigate those next steps. I love the workforce mentoring program because this is something we've kicked around for. You know, I know Ben's hopped out now, but we've kicked around this idea for many, many years. And at a certain point, it started to feel like a no brainer. If you look at our volunteer mentors, it's about a third of them come from the business community. We've got, you know, many, many educators, healthcare professionals who volunteer in the program. And then you look at our students career interests and it's aligned to that. And so it was like, shoot, we should be offering this support as they bridge that gap into the workforce and lend that career expertise to our students as they make those steps. And so I've loved seeing this program introduced over the past year because, um, and, you know, Baylor, I think you can talk about this more. Um, of course, the end goal is always that a student lands in the workforce, has that pathway to economic prosperity. But I think it's also the case, um, that, you know. For many students, they do just need a little bit of advice on how to show up for a job interview. What does it look like to write a really great resume? How do you show up at your first day of an internship, job shadowing or career ready to succeed? And so a lot of this is kind of soft skills, right? It's not necessarily just point A to point B, but it's really helping to build up the student as a professional. Absolutely. The number one thing that I say our mentors do is really just help students learn to advocate for themselves and step into a new phase of life with confidence. So like, the biggest thing that students need is just encouragement as they're making this transition and learning those soft skills for our access mentors, a lot of students have no idea how to do a college application, so pointing them to the right resources for that or where to do community service, offering them that little connection to your community that you've built over the course of your lifetime. And for our workforce mentors, it's things like figuring out how to dress for an interview, how to send a follow up email, um, how to submit your resume in the correct way. These little things that we all know as adults, but we take for granted, um, that an eighteen year old or a twenty one year old probably hasn't learned yet in the course of their lifetime. Well, and you know, you don't inherently know these things. No one does. Someone for you, Baylor. For me, uh, I had to teach us those things along the way. For me, it was a college advisor. Um, and so, you know, that is just this workforce mentorship program is our attempt to give our students that person, uh, to coach them through it, guide them through it, and make sure they're successful. Um, really quick, before we talk more about mentoring in twenty twenty seven, access mentoring continues to move forward, right? That is still an opportunity for everyone who volunteers. Absolutely. Our Access Mentor program is still our primary and largest mentor program. This past year, we had almost three thousand of our mentors volunteer in that capacity. Um, and so that is still working. We keep what works and we try new things. And that's kind of what we're doing. Um, so our mentors absolutely are still volunteering as access mentors. Our team only has sixty people on it, and there's sixty thousand high school seniors every single year. So we absolutely still need help getting those students through pipeline and into a college campus in the fall. Let's talk a little bit about next year. Um, one of the fun things about the Tennessee Achieves mentoring program is that, um, we're still only in August, but our brains are very much on the class of twenty twenty seven, um, and their graduation in May. Tell us a little bit about what mentoring looks like in twenty twenty seven. Uh, what the commitment looks like and how anyone listening today can get involved. Absolutely. So as I've touched on, we do have two programs. We have the access program and we have the workforce program, Our access program helps high school seniors transition to college with those college going milestones. So things like helping them figure out when the Fafsa deadline is connecting them to the right resources for that. Doing their community service hours, getting enrolled in the fall, all of those things that you think of when you traditionally think of the route to getting to college after graduation, and our workforce mentors like we've touched on, um, are paired with students based on their career field and they help them with that transition after they're graduating, um, with their associate's degree and moving into whether that be a four year college gets pursuing their bachelor's degree or entering into the workforce. And so these programs have a little bit different of a student load. So our workforce program, you would be paired with one to two students. Um, and our access access program is about three to six students per mentor, just depending on what county you're located in and how many mentors have volunteered in that county. So the the student load looks a little bit different for each area of the state. And so we say, like we've mentioned so many times that this takes about one hour per month. Primarily you are texting, calling, or emailing your students. You are more than welcome to meet with your students in person at a local coffee shop, a restaurant, a library, any of those options, but it's not required. So if you want to invite your students to meet with you in person, that is great. We we hope that you would do that, but it is not required to help students on this journey to going to college. And so we try to make this as light of a lift as possible for our for our volunteers, while still making it meaningful for our students as they're making these transitions. I think the important thing to touch on there, too, is this is still a community based mentor program while it's virtual. Well, you know, obviously, Baylor said you can connect in person. Um, you know, with both workforce and access mentorship, we are working really tirelessly through that pairing process to get you a student in your community, in your region. And so we're still keeping that impact localized five thousand mentors by November twentieth. Uh, it's always one of our biggest, but most exciting pushes of the year. Um, so you can certainly find more on how to get involved in the description. Uh, we'll have information for you there, but don't hesitate to reach out if you've got any questions. Um, one of the themes of today's episode, I hope that resonates with you is that this work is community based, and students benefit when their community stands behind them in their post-secondary and career journeys. So really exciting to hop on, kick off another year of mentor recruitment and share some of these highlights. And I want to thank you all for tuning in to another episode of the At Scale podcast, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.