Campus Corps: Therapeutic Mentoring for At-Risk Youth

This service-learning course will engage students as mentors with local at-risk youth. The course will combine lab sessions working directly with youth with lectures, academic readings, online discussions, and assignments that are both reflective and applied. As part of the course, students are required to spend one evening per week as a mentor with youth who have been referred to Campus Corps by the juvenile justice system. The goal of this program is to reduce juvenile delinquency, increase academic performance and access to college, and to encourage pro-social and healthy behaviors for the youth and to facilitate an enriched learning experience for the CSU students.

In this course, students will:
-- Use critical thinking skills to examine issues concerning youth.
-- Analyze models of power, privilege and oppression, diversity and social justice. Apply those models to their own life experiences and to the experiences of local youth.
-- Consider the themes of identity and adolescent development in the lives of youth and consider how the youth they work with understand and express these themes.
-- Apply theories of mentoring presented in readings and course discussion.
-- Develop professional skills including motivational interviewing, group facilitation, case record keeping, one-on-one mentoring, written and oral communication, & experience with youth.
-- Learn best practices in mentoring and apply knowledge in lab with youth.
-- Reflect on the benefits of community service activities.
-- Respond to a community defined need by providing local youth with responsible mentors who can learn to identify youth’s needs and strengths.
-- Reflect of their own youth experiences to provide much of the class content and context.
-- Integrate health and wellness programming into work with youth.