Mentoring News Post

June 24, 2024, Durham, NC – iRT is excited to announce that it is collaborating with the Office of Juvenile Affairs (OJA) and the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth (OCCY) to implement and evaluate Mentoring Central’s training programs and mentoring resources in mentoring programs across Oklahoma. Mentoring Central, a division of iRT, is dedicated to providing mentoring programs with trainings and tools to enhance their programs and help matches achieve better outcomes. Receiving feedback from and working closely with mentoring programs across the nation that have unique goals and serve diverse subpopulations of youth is an integral part of achieving [...]

January 19, 2024, Durham, NC – iRT Research Scientists Drs. Janis Kupersmidt and Katie Stump will present at the 2024 meeting of the annual National Mentoring Summit in Washington, DC, this month. Each year, MENTOR hosts mentoring professionals and advocates from across the nation to take part in expert-led presentations and networking opportunities to share mentoring best practices and drive positive change for young people. The next National Mentoring Summit will be held January 24-26, 2024. Mentoring experts for Mentoring Central, a division of iRT, have been attendees, presenters, and exhibitors at the Mentoring Summit every year since the first annual [...]

January 19, 2024, Durham, NC – iRT is pleased to welcome Abbey Collins to its team of skilled, world-renowned researchers and creative professionals. Collins joined iRT this month as a research intern to contribute to the research and development of high-quality mentor trainings on topics related to cultural competency. Collins brings a wealth of research experience in the fields of behavioral science and neuroscience to iRT, with publications in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine (in press), Psychology of Women Quarterly, Experimental Aging Research, and Epilepsy & Behavior. As a current doctoral student in the Department of Applied Social Psychology at North [...]

November 29, 2023, Durham, NC - iRT Research Scientist Dr. Rebecca Stelter joined a working group with other researchers from the National Mentoring Resource Center (NMRC) Research Board to develop a youth-informed guide for young people seeking or entering a mentoring relationship. The guide is now freely available on the NMRC website. Impactful mentoring relationships involve informed participation from both mentors and mentees, as well as support from mentoring program staff and parents. Mentees must feel equally equipped for the mentoring relationship as their mentor, be informed about their role as a mentee, and learn appropriate expectations for the mentoring relationship [...]

November 28, 2023, Durham, NC – Implementing high quality training is an integral step in the process of building and maintaining a successful mentoring program. Research has shown that mentor training programs that prepare mentors to establish a meaningful connection with their mentee may directly impact mentee outcomes, volunteer retention, and mentors’ feelings of satisfaction and self-efficacy as a mentor. Training mentees about what a mentoring relationship is, what they can expect from their match meetings, and how they can benefit from mentoring may ease their anxiety and uncertainty about entering a relationship with a mentor, and therefore yield more positive [...]