STARS Program Mentors Help Fellow First-Year Students Succeed at MCC

L-R, David Gray, Brittany Shillington, Hassan Khan, Lashan Lee and Dana Richards

Manchester Community College has a program designed to give students a head start on a rewarding college experience, with academic support and guidance from staff and faculty – but the unique benefit is the “insider” advice the participants get from student mentors who have been there before.

MCC’s Summer Training and Academic Retention Service (STARS) program is an intense summer of reading, writing, math and cultural enrichment that helps prepare selected students for something most of them have never encountered. The rigors of college life — including work load and the need for effective study skills — are often what makes or breaks a student in the first year, according to Jason Scappaticci, director, Office of Student Success and First-Year Programs.

“The STARS program addresses a problem that is all too common to Connecticut community colleges and others all over America,” Scappaticci said. “Many of the students who arrive as freshmen need remedial work in language arts, math or both. Statistically, these students are much less likely to stay in college and leave with a degree.”

To help keep the 27 new STARS students this summer from becoming statistics, David Gray of New Britain, Conn; Lashan Lee of Bloomfield, Conn.; Hassan Khan and Dana Richards of Manchester; and Brittany Shillington of Vernon are past STARS participants who are now serving as mentors. Each is assigned to a small group of students and meets with his or her “mentees” regularly to check in on how they are doing, provide guidance where possible, and direct the new students to more formal means of support such as the Student Advisory Center and other college resources when required.

“A lot of us, when we first get here, still think in terms of high school,” said Lee, who is now going into her second year in the general studies program. “But college is much different. The amount of homework is one of the things that hits the hardest.”

Among the other dramatic changes the mentors help current STARS participants with is the fact that at the same time that professors have higher standards, there are fewer tests and papers, so everything counts as a much higher percentage of the grade.

“And that also means there is less of a chance to recover once you start doing badly on something,” added Shillington, who will be entering her second year in the early childhood education program.

STARS is aimed specifically at low-income, often first-generation college students who place into developmental English and math. Students are retested at the end of the summer session, with more than 70 percent of them advancing directly to college-level work. In fact, recent STARS participants had fall-to-spring retention rates of 88 percent, compared with 80 percent for all new full-time students. STARS students are also less likely to be on academic probation than other new full-time students during their first semester.

For seven weeks during the first summer component, prior to beginning their first semester at MCC, students take a three-credit course, participate in cultural enrichment activities, and work one-on-one with tutors, mentors and advisors in preparing for the academic year. They also participate in a one-credit study skills course and math lab. There is no cost to students. The program covers the cost of tuition, books, supplies, breakfast and lunch, admission to special cultural programs and even bus fare to and from home.

It is the mentors’ excitement for the STARS program and their perspective that makes their relationship with students so extraordinary. “The students find out from their mentors that everyone entering college goes through a culture shock,” said Amanda Looney-Goetz, student development specialist. “It is a special relationship that often continues throughout a student’s academic career.”

For general information about the STARS program, contact Jason Scappaticci at 860-512-3224 or email jscappaticci@manchestercc.edu; or Linda Devlin at 860-512-3346.