10-13-2024 Education - Flipbook - Page 6
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The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, October 13, 2024
At Notre Dame of Maryland University, current international students support new arrivals as they report to campus to begin their four-year college experience in a new country.
Mentoring trend extends
to local student groups
Results show students that college is
more than books and academics
By Lisa Baldino, Contributing Writer
W
hether you’re the mentor or
the mentee, the relationship
is usually a special one. It may
not be a match made in heaven, but schools with effective
student mentoring programs spend a significant amount of time determining the
mentor match.
Mentoring took hold during the pandemic and has been growing ever since.
According to MentorCliq, an online research
company in the mentoring market space,
between 54 and 71% of organizations now
use mentoring to some degree. Mentoring
is used to increase skills, retain employees and groom future organization leaders.
Mentoring has proven to be integral to Gen
Z and Millennials to further their careers. In
fact, 83% of Gen Z workers believe a mentor
is crucial for success in the workplace.
Students at three area colleges experience mentoring first-hand through student
groups on campus. Mentees like these are
more likely go on to mentor others – 89%
of Mentorloop.com survey respondents said
they would do so.
One of the college programs that demonstrates the full circle of mentoring is
the award-winning MentHER program at
Towson University. The group consists of
women who have created a layered community service effect. The program connects
Towson University sophomores one-on-one
with mentors in the business community,
then in turn, the young women provide
peer-mentoring to high school students.
Lauren Tigue-Meredith, professional
development partner in the college of busi-
ness and economics at Towson University,
says the program’s match process is extensive. Mentees tend to have high GPAs and
specialize in a broader field. Matching
involves responses to profiles and coordinating professional concentrations or specialties with the mentee’s needs. “We connect
with national mentoring research and make
changes according to their best practices,”
Tigue-Meredith says.
The 16-year-old program is the winner
of the BTU Award by Towson University’s
office of strategic partnerships and applied
research, and it most recently won the
Inspiring Programs in Business Award from
Insight into Diversity, a leading higher education publication.
The high school interaction is a partnership between Towson University and
Landsdown High. The high school students
attend “first day of college” presentations
on the Towson University campus, where
they experience interactive tours, eating
in the dining hall and small-group discussions with Q&A. “They learn how to foster
relationships, and they develop a sense of
community and building together,” TigueMeredith explains.
Emily McElroy, a business administration major at Towson University, says the
outreach for high school students is something that is making an impact in the com-
Adobe Stock
New graduate programs
support career opportunities
Business, communication and psychology programs grow
By Alex Keown, Contributing Writer
W
hen the fall 2024 semester began,
the University of Maryland Global
Campus unveiled a newly designed
Masters of Business Administration
program. It’s something the school
does every few years in order to keep up with the rapidly changing business landscape, says Dr. Mohamed
Ezz, a former physician and now full professor at
the University of Maryland Global Campus. Each
semester there are tweaks to the program to address
emerging issues that are likely to have a wide-ranging
impact. For example, Ezz points to the debt crisis in
Greece that included that country defaulting on a loan
payment to the International Monetary Fund in 2015.
At the time of the interview, Ezz was in Egypt. He
explained the country is an importer of oil, wheat and
corn. Russia and Ukraine are the biggest exporters of
those commodities. The ongoing war has caused the
prices to rise, which means the people of Egypt, and
other countries who import those goods, are being
forced to pay more.
“We have to adapt to include things that are relevant to the world,” Ezz says. “We want our students
to be current with what’s going on. You can’t be in
business today without knowing what’s going on in
the world.”
When it was time to make the latest adjustments
to the MBA program, Ezz says the department turned
to UMGC’s stakeholders, students and employees
to gauge their thoughts on what the MBA program
should include. They collected the information and
spent three years building the new program around
that feedback, Ezz says.
“We had the best subject matter experts create our
courses,” Ezz says. “It took 40 or 50 meetings to get to
where we are now.”
The new MBA program is designed to create
flexibility for students as they schedule the different
required courses. The MBA program involves seven
core courses and three specialized courses, such as
marketing or global business. The revamped program
allows students to take the courses in any sequence,
rather than the linear progress of previous years, Ezz
says.
“The previous program was rigid; you had to go
through a specified sequence but now it’s more flexible,” Ezz says.
MBA students are able to focus their studies on
key areas, such as marketing, global business, human
resources management and the newest direction, nonprofit management. Ezz says UMGC offered a Master
of Arts degree in nonprofit management, but it was
not previously in the MBA program. They felt this was
something important to add because “there are a lot of
not-for-profit employers out there,” Ezz says.
Another addition to the MBA program is UMGC
now accepts transfer credits, Ezz says. That was another change made due to the feedback from stakeholders
and students.
The courses are eight weeks each and students
are allowed to work at their own pace. Many of the
UMGC students are adults who are already in the
workforce. Allowing them to work at their own pace
as they juggled other responsibilities was something
students wanted. The MBA program is online, which
allows UMGC students in Maryland and across the
globe the opportunity to earn the degree.
UMGC isn’t the only university adapting to meet
changing demands. Salisbury University established a
new Master of Arts in public communication degree
to meet the rising demand for public communication
specialists. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, there are an expected 30,000 public commu-
munity. “These students are often the first
generation in their families to go to college.
They’re unsure, but we try to give them
the best advice from our perspective.” Fifty
percent of the high school students are firstgeneration college students.
The Towson University MentHER women
also have access to workshops on topics like
salary negotiation, boundary setting and
relationship-building. Student mentee Umu
Bah Jalloh says, “The program is focused on
the female experience in the workplace. It
maximizes soft skills, which can elevate your
professional skills.” Bah Jalloh, who is pursuing entrepreneurial studies with a management concentration, says her mentor works
for Homeland Security and has provided
great insight into how a business runs, and
how she can achieve both her professional
and personal goals.
Towson University’s college of business also offers Mentoring to Advance
Professional Development (MAPD), which
focuses on the needs of students in their
junior and senior years.
At Notre Dame of Maryland University,
current international students support new
arrivals as they report to campus to begin
their four-year college experience in a new
country. Some of them don’t speak the language and others have never been away from
home. Notre Dame started the International
Student Organization (ISO) more than a
decade ago to give international students a
group where they could feel at home, says
Naomi Ewhe, president of the ISO and a
sophomore pre-med student from Nigeria.
“We welcome the international students
at the beginning of the semester and talk
about what it’s like to attend an American
college, what they can learn from their experiences, and any concerns they might have,”
Ewhe explains. She describes it as a mentoring opportunity for international students.
Jens Mueller, faculty advisor for ISO,
says, “The mentors and students are very
carefully matched so that the students get
the best possible experience for their needs.
In addition, the partnering helps to overcome potential language barriers.”
The International Student Organization
has grown significantly in recent years. It
is keeping pace with the growth of Notre
Dame’s international population as the university enters its second year welcoming
men into the traditional undergraduate program. The group’s growth has sparked big
plans for this academic year, including several celebratory events during International
Education Week, a joint initiative sponsored
by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S.
Department of Education.
Mentoring trend,
continued on next page
nications specialists who will enter the workforce each
year through 2030. The majority of these positions
will lie between Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Salisbury University’s new program enables
graduates to step into communication roles in multiple fields, including athletic organizations, corporate,
health, and public affairs and political operations.
Jakob Todd, who graduated from Salisbury
University in 2023 with a degree in communications,
is one of the first students in the new M.A. program.
When he was still an undergraduate, Todd heard
that Salisbury University was planning to offer this
new program. After graduating, he took a job in the
student activities office until the program began. Now,
he’s focused on completing the degree and landing a
communications position with an athletic organization.
“It’s exciting to be part of the first group of students in this program,” Todd says.
David Burns, Ph.D., department of communication graduate director at Salisbury University, called
the new M.A. program “a fantastic opportunity for
students who are studying communications.” He says
the new degree is a “great opportunity” for the students to gain the credentials that will allow them to
move into positions that are in demand and financially
lucrative.
The Master of Arts in public communication is a
36-hour program that offers four tracks, one in public
affairs and political communication, one in health
communication, a track in athletic communication
and one in corporate communication. Burns says the
coursework will benefit people who are already in
the workforce and may hold communications titles
but don’t have the formal training for the role. The
university is making classes convenient for working
professionals who are trying to get a degree and keep
their day job, Burns says.
“Salisbury’s mission is to have practical workforce
training. It’s something the state of Maryland supports.
When we looked at the growth of public communication in the D.C. corridor, we saw an opportunity to
create a hands-on program focused on developing
workforce skills,” Burns says.
James Burton, chair of the Salisbury University
communication department, agrees and says the program is something that will help people in the workforce, as well as undergraduates. He is excited about
the first cohort of students in the program.
“This university is delivering the tools the students
will need to be successful,” Burton says.
At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County,
the new ADVANCE Maryland program was established to train 14 clinical psychology doctoral candidates and 10 social work master’s students. The
training program is funded by a two-year grant of
more than $900,000 from the Health Resources and
Services Administration. The funds will support the
training of the students and their faculty advisers to
deliver culturally and linguistically competent behavioral health services to juveniles and young adults in
underserved and rural English- and Spanish-speaking
communities in Maryland. It’s a program aimed to fit
growing needs within the state.
