News

  • November 22, 2011
    Lessons 3 and 5 of the Building the Foundation Course have been updated to include new content.
    Lesson 3 has been revised to focus primarily on the 3 roles that a mentor should play in the life of their mentee. Lesson 5 on the importance of having fun has been expanded to provide mentors with 4 useful tips on having fun in the mentoring relationship.

    If you or any mentors in your organization were currently taking Lessons 3 or 5 then you will be required to start the lesson again from the beginning. Progress and responses in the other lessons will not be affected by this update.

  • Ocober 18, 2011
    Drs. Janis Kupersmidt and Rebecca Stelter to present at the NC Mentoring Summit
    Date: October 25th, 2011
    Location: The Jane S. McKimmon Conference and Training Center
    Cost: $25.00 Registration
    Learn more and register
    http://www.cisnc.org/whats_happening/view/2011_cisnc_mentoring_summit

    Dr. Janis Kupersmidt and Dr. Rebecca Stelter will present at the 2011 NC Mentoring Summit sponsored by Communities in Schools of North Carolina at the Jane S. McKimmon Conference and Training Center on October 25th, 2011. The purpose of the summit is to engage and strengthen the North Carolina mentoring community. Dr. Kupersmidt will present on the Mentoring Central Mentor Training Program, an iRT training product. Dr. Stelter will present on the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring Third Edition. Dr. Jean Rhodes (http://www.rhodeslab.org/), Mentoring Central collaborator, will give the keynote address and two mentoring workshops.

  • April 14, 2011
    Read the latest news for mentors and administrators
    Mentoring Central provides two resources with news and tips, one directed primarily at mentors and the other for mentoring program staff administrators. Both resources summarize the latest research in the field of youth mentoring and apply the research findings to your role as either a mentor or a mentoring program staff administrator.

    Read the latest news for mentors.
    Read the latest news for administrators.

  • April 14, 2011
    The Mentoring Central Administration website has been updated!
    New Administration Features include:
    • Organized menus for easy navigation
    • Course statistics on landing page
    • Printable Certificate of Completion for each mentor

  • April 5, 2011
    iRT Researchers Attend the Society for Research and Child Development Conference
    Last week, Drs. Kupersmidt, Parker, and Stelter traveled to Montreal to attend the biennial SRCD Conference. There they presented research on SIP-AP and CARE, iRT’s social and emotional learning assessments. The conference was also a time to meet and share ideas with other devoted researchers and psychologists. For more information about the conference, visit www.srcd.org, and to learn more about SIP-AP and CARE, visit www.sealprograms.com.

  • March 24-25, 2011
    Dr. Rebecca Stelter in Pittsburgh to Lead a Workshop on Match Support
    Rebecca Stelter, Ph.D., will be in Pittsburgh March 24th and 25th to lead another workshop for Mentoring Children of Prisoners program staff which will discuss ways to translate the latest research into practice. Dr. Stelter presented a similar workshop in San Diego earlier this year on match support. For more information about the workshop, visit the MCP Support Center online at http://members.mcpsupport.com/default.aspx.

  • February 10-11, 2011
    Dr. Rebecca Stelter Conducts Mentoring Workshop in San Diego
    Rebecca Stelter, Ph.D., project director for Mentoring Central, will conduct a day and half long workshop for Mentoring Children of Prisoner program staff on the topic of Match Support. The Mid-Atlantic Network for Youth (MANY) organized the workshop, which takes place on February 10th-11th in San Diego, California. For more news on mentoring and match support, visit www.mentoringcentral.net.

  • January 25, 2011
    iRT at National Mentoring Summit
    Mentoring Central researchers and developers, Drs. Janis Kupersmidt and Rebecca Stelter attend the first National Mentoring Summit January 25th in Washington, DC. There they will meet with other leaders in the field of mentoring and attended sessions to discuss many issues surrounding the field of mentoring and corresponding research. First Lady Michelle Obama will give the keynote address at the summit which is the culminating event for the 10th anniversary of National Mentoring Month.

  • January 1, 2011
    Mentoring Central hits YouTube! Check out the video we have posted on YouTube to motivate volunteers to get prepared to be a mentor during National Mentoring Month. We want to spread the word about all the resources available for mentors on Mentoring Central, especially the Building the Foundation web-based training for mentors. Click on "Like" if you like our video or post a comment.

  • January 1, 2011
    January is National Mentoring Month! The purpose of National Mentoring Month is to highlight the important role that mentors can play in the life of a child and to help encourage people to volunteer their time as a mentor. Check out the official National Mentoring Month website at: www.nationalmentoringmonth.org for information about ways you can be involved in mentoring and celebrating mentors this month. Mentoring Central will be posting news and information about National Mentoring Month throughout the month of January so stay tuned for more!

  • September 28, 2010
    NIH Grant to iRT for further development of Mentoring Central is the topic of today’s MENTOR Minute. "iRT is grateful for MENTOR’s support of our research efforts to create an evidence-based mentor training program for community-based mentors," said Dr. Janis Kupersmidt, principal investigator on the grant. She and Dr. Jean Rhodes, co-investigator, look forward to consulting with many national and local mentoring organizations as they develop and evaluate this training program, so that it reflects state-of-the-art research and best practices in the field.

  • September 10, 2010
    The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $1.09 million research grant to Dr. Janis Kupersmidt, Senior Research Scientist at innovation Research & Training, and Dr. Jean Rhodes, Chair of MENTOR’s Research and Policy Council and Professor of Psychology at University of Massachusetts-Boston, to develop and evaluate an evidence-based mentor training program for community-based mentors.

    The new project builds upon the successes of a previously funded NIH grant completed by this investigative team to develop the web-based course, Building the Foundation, hosted on the Mentoring Central website. The new award provides funds to extend their training into a blended learning program involving both in-person and web-based training experiences. The training program will be developed in alignment with the Third Edition of MENTOR’s (2009) Elements of Effective Practice for MentoringTM (EEPM) and therefore, will be based upon the most up-to-date research findings.

    Because in-person training is both cost- and time-intensive as well as challenging to standardize across local mentoring programs, this project will include on-demand, interactive, video-rich courses related to developing and maintaining effective mentoring relationships. In-person training resources will be created for use by local mentoring organization staff members to complement and augment the web-based training courses.

    Also, post-match training and support resources for mentors as well as an administrative website for use by staff members to monitor progress and performance of mentors in the web-based courses will be developed.

    Importantly, the award provides the funds to evaluate the effectiveness of the training program on increasing match length and quality.

    More information about the new grant award and training resources can be found at www.mentoringcentral.net or through email to Mentoring Central contact.

  • September 7, 2010:
    Mentoring Central launched a newly designed website with many new features including a new homepage with separate links for mentors and mentoring program staff; a new "Learn More" section; and news relevant to mentors. The new website creates a more streamlined and user-friendly web environment for your mentor training needs. Mentors and mentoring program staff can log directly into the Mentoring Central website and have access to many new features. Coming soon, mentors will have access to an interactive, moderated MentorWiki where they can both learn and contribute to useful information for mentors. New features for Mentoring program staff include enrolling mentors in courses and tracking mentors' progress.