UC Med Mentors Get Laptops to Help Cincinnati Schoolchildren

CINCINNATI—Medical students have one of the most demanding curricula in higher education, but at the University of Cincinnati, many still have time for mentoring schoolchildren.

They often join Med Mentors, a volunteer effort in the College of Medicine that works with the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative (CYC) to link UC students to Cincinnati Public School children. The med students will find their mentoring will get a bit easier thanks to $15,000 gift from a group of physicians at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

The generous funding be given over a three-year period and will pay for 30 laptop computers which will be given to local schoolchildren to work with mentors. During a March 22, 2016, ceremony 10 computers were presented to the mentees in the Medical Sciences Building's Lucas Board Room on UC's medical campus.

"CYC finds the mentees and helps train our medical students as mentors," says Charles Cavallo, MD, president of the Med Mentors advisory board, instructor in the UC Department of Pediatrics and an alumnus of the College of Medicine. "They will help us load educational programs on these laptops and help award special student mentees laptops to work with mentors to achieve objectives such as improving reading skills, word processing, math and spelling. We want to try to introduce them to world of technology."

Kate Elliott, communications and marketing specialist for CYC, says many students in the CYC mentor program face extreme obstacles like poverty, families with limited access to education and instability within their homes. 

"They lack access to resources that many of us take for granted like a computer," says Elliott. "Under the guidance of mentors, these computers will be an invaluable tool for access to educational resources, freedom to work on homework in locations other than the public library and experience with technology that will serve them well in any future career."

Med Mentors has focused on preparing students for academic success, but mentors also have had great success exposing students to cultural activities through visits to the museum, zoo and arts functions, says Keith Stringer, MD, faculty advisor for Med Mentors, Cincinnati Children's Hospital pathologist and assistant professor in the UC College of Medicine's Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

"The UC Med Mentor program has been an integral part of CYC's mentoring services for more than 14 years," says Jane Keller, president and CEO of CYC. "Technology has become vital to professional and educational success, and we are grateful to Cincinnati Children's for extending this incredible resource to our mentors and mentees."

At UC, there are more than 200 mentors participating in Med Mentors. They assist more than 100 schoolchildren at area schools. Mentees come from various schools including, but not limited to, ones near the College of Medicine such as North Avondale Montessori, South Avondale Elementary School and Rockdale Academy. The mentoring effort at UC targets students in grades three through six though some students stay with Med Mentors for longer periods, says Cavallo. 

Med Mentors was founded in 2001 by Wan Lim PhD, associate professor-educator of medical education emeritus. The effort has received support from the Charles H. Dater Foundation, the Rue Foundation and the Medical Student Association.