After receiving a grant from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, Temple will open its Mentor Collective to all incoming freshmen starting in the Fall 2025 semester. The program has been available to incoming freshmen in the College of Liberal Arts for two years.
The Mentor Collective matches upperclassmen with freshmen who share similar interests, life experience or academic background to create a first-hand peer resource. The platform aims to enhance student success and retention.
“We’re bringing in higher numbers of students who are first generation, so I think there’s a general consensus among the faculty and staff that we really need to devote more resources to helping this population of students,” said Chris Wolfgang, CLA’s assistant dean for student success. “I don’t know if it’s a pandemic effect in some cases, but there seems to be a lot of loneliness on campus, there are students who aren’t connected with one another.”
Nearly a quarter of surveyed students felt they did not have a strong support system at Temple, and 77% believe it’s hard or takes effort to meet new people on campus, according to a February 2025 poll conducted by The Temple News.
CLA received a grant from alumna Sharon Taylor in 2023 to create the partnership with the Mentor Collective. About 150 students participated that year, and 250 mentors and mentees are currently involved in the program, Wolfgang said.
The APLU announced the grant to Temple to improve student success, alongside five other public schools — Northern Illinois University, Stony Brook University in New York, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Pennsylvania State University at Altoona and Prairie View A&M University in Texas. The grants are valid for three years.
Mentors and mentees meet through the Mentor Collective and can chat through its application or continue conversations in person.
“There’s a side of it that we want students to succeed – that is literally why we’re here,” said Dan Berman, vice provost for undergraduate studies. “It’s our mission to educate students and give them degrees, but we’re also working not only on the side of recruiting more students so that our finances look better, but keeping the ones we have, too”.
Wolfgang and Berman will work on expanding the program this summer and offer students the peer mentorship program either as a mentor, for primarily upperclassmen, and then mentees, who could be any first-year student coming in.
The Mentor Collective facilitates the conversations through a post-check-in sheet that mentors fill out at the end of the meeting, reviewing their conversation and any notes going forward. They can also flag any issues or signs of extreme stress or trouble that might need to be brought to advisors or staff.
“I think it will also just help build a stronger sense of community on Temple’s campus,” said Ashley Hawk, a senior neuroscience major and a peer mentor in CLA. “When you come to campus, you’re already connected with someone who has maybe just one interest [in common with you] but it’s someone you’re able to talk to, reach out to, and I think it will help with any loneliness or overwhelm that you get when you come to college.”
The peer mentorship program is a part of Temple’s recent push to support students before and after they enroll at Temple. Following the opening of the One-Stop student services center in Carnell Hall, Temple announced a partnership with Heights Philadelphia for the Future Scholars program, which mentors students from 7th grade to high school and leads to free tuition if a student decides to go to Temple when they graduate.
“I feel like this is part of [the push] too, it’s a way to connect people, and more connections are better,” Berman said. “We have so many students living on or near campus. But we have people coming from all over the city and living in all kinds of different places. Sometimes it feels a bit less like a close knit campus community than some schools do. We’re just trying to create more of a culture on campus, helping students succeed but creating community.”
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