Research on youth mentoring overwhelmingly suggests that at-risk youth benefit from having mentors to guide them through their academic and personal lives. School-based mentoring (SBM) is a common practice which often utilizes adult mentors to work with youth with positive effects being consistently documented among adults who choose to mentor. The College Ambition Program (CAP) is a multi-component intervention model currently being implemented in two urban and two rural mid-Michigan schools. As part of the CAP intervention, college mentors are recruited to work with students by taking on a dual role as traditional tutor and academic mentor, with the ultimate goal of guiding students who would not ordinarily consider college, or who are misaligned in their academic abilities with a college or university of their proposed choice. Data are collected through a number of instruments with mentors documenting their experiences with students in real-time and retrospectively. The overarching objective of this thesis is to analyze how the mentors' expectations of themselves and their students evolved over the course of their term with the College Ambition Program. Preliminary analyses of these data show that younger mentors are reporting an increased awareness of themselves and a better understanding of urban youth and their academic environment. Through a deeper analysis of the mentor data, this research aims to explicate the impact of at-risk youth mentoring on college-aged mentors and the importance of having mentoring opportunities available for young-adults.
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