Mentoring for Success

Texas Instruments in Partnership with

Sarah Zumwalt Middle School
Written by: Daniel Pemberton

It is often taken for granted the impact that mentors have upon our lives, most children grow up
in an environment where they have their pick of their favorite one. Unfortunately that is not the
case for approximately half of the students attending Sarah Zumwalt Middle School. Because of
this lack of guidance these children are in danger of not reaching their full potential in life.
At Texas Instruments we are proposing providing mentors to these disadvantaged children. Our
mentors will each meet with a group of four students once a week over the 36 week school year.
Each student will have a 30 minute one on one session with the mentor and a two hour group
session. The one on one time we have built is particularly important in our opinion because it
will provide some time for the student to freely talk about issues that may be bothering them in
private. During the group session we will be doing fun hands on application type projects to
show the students a different side of learning. Finally, we will wrap up the school year with a trip
to one of our Dallas campuses so the children can see what its like to work at TI and hopefully
give them a goal to work towards.
Staffing for this project would have to include 45 TI employees to achieve our goal of a 1:4 ratio.
We believe this is the optimal number to not only give each student the support that they need
and also not overwhelm the infrastructure at the school.
Costs of the program are broken down as follows:
$280,260.00 for the program.
o $173.00 per session x 45 employees x 36 weeks
$18,400.00 campus tour
o $8.00 per student and staff for lunch
o $4,000.00 to transport the students to our campus
o $12,600.00 for gift bags including school supplies
$298,660.00 total cost for the project
Inclosing we believe that this is a worthwhile program that will benefit not only the children
participating in the program, but the community as a whole. We are looking forward to
implementing this program in conjunction with the Dallas Chamber of Commerce.