The professional mentor program plus: An academic success and retention tool for adult learners

Abstract

To promote the academic success of and to retain adult students of color, the Academic Services Unit at the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM), an urban Catholic university, in Detroit Michigan, has designed and implemented the Professional Mentor Program Plus, funded by the State of Michigan's King-Chavez-Parks (KCP) higher education initiative, that fuses academic support programming, and mentoring, designed exclusively for adult students, into a proactive academic success and retention model. The program's rationale, history, and findings from the 2003-04 year-end evaluation are presented, followed by the program's future development plan. © 2007, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.