The Continuation of Retention at MSU.

By: Arsha Pinson

With new plans on the horizon for the 2019 spring semester, the Peer B.E.A.R.S
mentoring program at Morgan State University has had an amazing start in their first semester.

This grant funded program is the first mentoring program created to support STEM
[science, technology, engineering, and math] students here, and stands for Peers Bringing
Enrichment and Rearing Success.

At the beginning of the Fall 2018 semester, the program began its launch with a week of
activities to engage STEM students.

“Peer B.E.A.R.S & SRC Week 2k18”, was from Aug. 27th to the 31st including activities
such as a Q&A Mixer where students could come to ask questions about Morgan life, and a
STEM Mentor Match day where STEM-freshman were matched with a mentor.

“One of the main purposes of this program is to help retention in the STEM increase,”
said Danielle Ballard, a retention officer for the School of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural
Sciences.

Ballard continues to explain, “Baltimore City Schools, which may attract many Morgan
State applicants, house about 80,000 students, about 55 percent come from low income or single
parent households.”

Black students are 90 percent of that statistic, with 50 percent of the student body having
a learning disability. Out of Morgan State’s 15,000 students, half come from those statistics.

This causes an issue in terms of retention because those students are not ready to handle
the complexity of the work given to them, so they begin to leave the STEM program.

STEM retention at most HBCU’s is around 30 percent, however at Morgan State it is

around 70 percent and continuously growing. “We wanted to create a culture and structure that
helps to optimize the talents of all students that come to SCMNS,” said Claton Lewis; Director
of the mentoring program.

Lewis also said that to “retain students at a higher rate they must engage students earlier.
The engagement plans include pairing lower classmen with higher classmen to provide them
with a mentor, someone to navigate through their major and most importantly a friend.”
Thus, creating a community that has the resources to allow students to be successful in STEM.

“When I first heard of this program, I knew it’d be a good one because there were times, I
wanted to leave the program because of how difficult it was, but I found someone myself to
mentor me and be there for me when times got hard,” said Jordyn Alderman, a junior civil
engineering student from Baltimore, MD.

Alderman said that by giving students a program already set to match them with a mentor
instead of them doing the hard work of finding one their selves that more students will take
advantage of the program because having somewhere there that has already possibly done a lot
of the work they have and understand it more will encourage them to push more.

However more students engaging with the program will require more resources to be
present including more tutors for students to be matched with.

“We have been able to match about 177 students to over 80 mentors,” said Lewis, “only
letting a few students slip through the cracks from the 265 students we have in the program. So,
the next step is figuring out how to get those others involved and we have plenty of plans on the
horizon.”

The first and big new thing Peer BEARS will be introducing in the Spring is a room on
campus that they plan to renovate and make the central meeting place and office for the program.

Lewis said, this will be a place for students to study, get help with assignments, and even
meet with their mentors.

With the help of a $10,000 grant they will start the process of creating the study room,
fund spring events, and purchase “Peer BEAR” t-shirts and other gear for the program
mentors and students.

“I believe with more publicity on campus this program can grow a lot more over the next
few semesters, so things like t-shirts and other gear related to the program will definitely catch
more students attention.”, said Nicole Steel, a senior Computer Science major from Baltimore,
MD.

Despite the growth of their on-campus presentation, the program is also focusing on
making sure their off-campus influence is just as important.

Over the semester the program has traveled to schools in Baltimore to talk to students
about college and education specially around STEM.

Their goal is to inform students of the multiple branches beneath the overall term of
STEM, and what to expect when they enter the world of being educated about the concept.

“We want incoming or potential students to feel comfortable when they come to Morgan
State, we want them to know they have a support to fall back on when things get tough,” said
Program Coordinator Kevin Anthoine.

The program also encourages high schools’ students to come to Morgan’s campus to get
a feel of what it’s like to be a STEM major through the “STEM Bear for a day” program.
 With the program already being so successful there has to be a lot of work done in the
background for such a tremendous outcome.

One important thing done was having continuous training for the mentors the program
works with.

“We have one-hour training session every Monday to teach our mentors how to properly
interact with their students. The last training, we have will focus on stress management and how
to help the students with any stress they may be dealing with during finals time,” said Claton
Lewis.

With this intensive training the mentors already in the program and the ones to come will
be able to help students with any problem they may have.

This is an overall positive program to bring to come to Morgan State University, despite
the different tutoring and mentoring programs found on this campus this is one that connects
directly back to STEM students.

With the field of STEM already being a difficult one to grasp the building of mentoring
program like Peer BEARS is one that will definitely make a huge change.

“STEM is definitely a hard program to complete, and doing it alone is a personal reward
that makes you believe you can do anything. However, building a community ensure more
success and more graduation numbers, so Peer BEARS will definitely be a great program,” said
Kevin Little of Prince Georges County, a STEM alumnus from Morgan State University.

He is now systems operator at Morgan & Chase in Wilmington, DE.

With such a great start for the program, there is still so much to come.