Friends-in-STEM Mentoring

Despite the challenges presented by the COVID-19 Pandemic, Wake Downtown worked hard to remain engaged with the Winston-Salem community. With health and safety top of mind, students, faculty, and staff found creative ways to stay connected. Friends-in-STEM was one of the programs born out of these efforts, and the program has been held ever since.

Program Information

Friends-in-STEM is a virtual mentoring program designed to match local school children with a mentor, “friend-in-STEM.” Mentorship is proven to be a critical part of a young person in STEM’s personal and professional development. The representation, guidance, and reflection offered by mentorship seeks to encourage students to stay focused on their academic goals and to follow their passions. It also equips them with the excitement, skills, and resources which are necessary in looking for future programs, volunteering, and higher education opportunities. Our program’s goal is to help local students begin building these connections early while also sparking a light of curiosity in STEM. Participating students will be paired with a “friend-in-STEM” trained mentor who is a WFU undergraduate or graduate student studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).

All mentors undergo the same training, which includes a background check, protection of minors training, and mentorship “best practices,” with assistance from the Wake Forest University Mentoring Resource Center. This program is also made possible with the support and close collaboration of the Office of Civic and Community Engagement.

Friends-in-STEM has been held each of the following semesters:

– Spring 2021
– Summer 2021
– Fall 2021
– Spring 2022

– Summer 2022
– Fall 2022
– Spring 2023
– Fall 2023

– Spring 2024
– Fall 2024
– Spring 2025

Spring 2025 Program Details

Program coordinators (Alana James, Erin McCollum) will host periodic check-ins with each individual mentor to ensure that the pairs are holding regularly scheduled meetings. For the Spring 2025 version of the program, mentor-mentee pairs will have a virtual weekly hour-long 1:1 mentoring session guided by prompts. Mentoring will begin the week of Monday, February 3rd and run through the week of April 21st. There will be no mentoring the week of Spring Break, and mentoring will be optional during the week of April 21st, as this is WFU’s last week of classes before exams.