The Wildcat Youth Mentors

Helping New Hampshire kids get though school

By Brian Ward

Durham- In 14 different schools across the state, kids are receiving guidance and help through the Wildcat Youth Mentors program. The program’s mentors are UNH students and alumni who volunteer their time to help kids through school.

The Wildcat Youth Mentors program was founded in 2003 by Bruce A. Montville, a UNH alumnus, in response to what he saw was a problem amongst school kids regarding dropouts and academic performance. Montville had previously founded two other nonprofit organizations, LifeWise and Water Guardians. The Water Guardians program provides environmental education to schools about water resources, and it was through this program that Montville was able to make the contacts needed to start the Wildcat Youth Mentors. According to him, the main goals of the program are to lower the rates of absenteeism, raise academic productivity, and improve social behavior among the kids. 

 The Wildcat Youth Mentors originally started out with 14 mentors working at Barrington Elementary.  The program has grown steadily over the years and now has about 100 members and services 14 different schools in the state, including Newmarket Jr. High, Oyster River Middle School, Oyster River High and Dover High.  The Wildcat Youth Mentors program is still expanding, with talks with officials at Northwood Middle School, Monarch School of New England, and Spurwink School about bringing the program to them. “The schools keep asking us to come back, they love us.” Montville said. 

The mentors at the program are all UNH students and alumni. To become mentors, volunteers must be able to commit at least an hour a week to the program, take a training orientation on how to be a good mentor, be highly compassionate toward kids and pass a criminal background check. Mentors work one-on-one with the kids, and help them by teaching them good study habits and supporting them in various ways. Mentors are often able to work with their professors to have their mentoring qualify as academic credit if they can relate their work back to their major.

One former Wildcat Youth Mentor, Megan Graves, recalled one of her strongest memories of the program during an email interview. “One student I mentored was really interested in creating his own techno music, and wanted someone’s unbiased opinion on it. I really loved what he did and you could see how much effort he put into it, and I think he liked being able to share with someone. I also helped him find a job locally.” Graves worked at both Dover High School and Oyster River High School during her two years as a mentor.

An impact study on the Wildcat Youth Mentors in 2007 conducted by the Whittemore School of Business found that the program was well received by both the schools and the students and that “There were many more potential students than available mentors.” The study found that kids form bonds with their mentors as friends and role models, to the point where some kids brag about their mentors to others. Montville believes that the success of the mentorship process comes from the fact that an UNH student is a typically a young adult. He believes that UNH mentors can relate to what the kids they are mentoring are going through because of how close their relative ages are and that relationships build more easily because of it. A recent study conducted by the New Hampshire State Department of Education found that the high school dropout rate for the 2009-2010 school year is at 0.97 percent, a major decrease of 40 percent compared to the previous school year.

Work cited

Graves, Megan. "Wildcat Youth Mentors." E-mail interview. 4 Oct. 2011.

Montville, Bruce A. "Wildcat Youth Mentors." Personal interview. 29 Sept. 2011

Donovan, Steve. "Wildcat Youth Mentors." E-mail interview. 2 Oct. 2011.

Hall, Jonathan, Alexander Bickford, Stacy Mello, and Philip Trzeinski. Wildcat Youth Mentors: Impact Paper. Impact Study. Durham: Whittemore School of Business, 2007. Web. 29 Sept. 2011.

New Hampshire Department of Education. Comparing the Annual Dropout Rate for the Last Three School Years. 7 Mar. 2011. Raw data. Http://www.governor.nh.gov/media/news/2011/030811-dropout-rate.htm, Concord, NH.