february 2009 issue
PD Spotlight
Mentors Head to Class
BY NANCY TOTH, MA CHRP Manager, Professional Development & Manager, Human Resources |
APEGGA’s fledgling mentoring program for urban Aboriginal students starts to pay dividends
BY Nancy Toth, MA CHRP
Manager, Professional Development & Human Resources
Did you know that APEGGA has an Aboriginal mentoring program? The seeds were planted about two years ago by the APEGGA Aboriginal Affairs Committee, and the program is going strong.
The committee gave the coordi-nator of the existing APEGGA Mentoring Program a mandate to spearhead the new program. The goal was to develop a mentoring program specifically for urban Aboriginal students in kindergarten to Grade 12 and at both Alberta universities. The recent addition of Aboriginal counsellors to some urban schools with high Aboriginal populations has helped in this task.
Back when the Association’s Aboriginal awareness strategy began, a PEGG article invited APEGGA’s Aboriginal professionals to self-identify. That call by Len Shrimpton, P.Eng., Director, Internal Affairs, brought in our initial e-mails.
Did you realize that there are probably fewer than 100 of APEGGA’s 53,000 members who are Aboriginal? It was difficult to identify mentors for our program, given the group’s under-representation in the professions.
Our original resource group had about nine mentors. Due to their high performance and profile, there was a corresponding high turnover in this group. Company transfers and other offers from industry took their toll, but we kept finding replacements.
Today, seven members in Calgary and four in Edmonton are mentoring nearly 100 Aboriginal kids. These students are in three schools in Calgary and Edmonton.
In Calgary, the initial core group of nine mentors has already had an effect. Three elementary school students there are talking about an engineering or geoscience career. A handful of APEGGA professionals can have a profound impact!
Here’s another interesting note. In the spring of 2007, one Calgary school started its own Aboriginal mentoring program.
Our longest serving mentor is Matt Scheuring, P.Eng. Born in Alaska, he grew up in Montana and earned his master of science degree in engineering at MIT. He has been a committed, faithful mentor and the mainstay of our pilot for two years, despite having a highly responsible position in a major company.
He’s not the only mentor in the program with an atypical background. Another of our dedicated mentors is a professional from the West Indies.
How many members would choose to dress up in an elf’s costume to hand out Christmas stockings and gift certificates to Aboriginal students? Well, Marie-Eve Caron, Geol.I.T., did exactly that for K-to-12 children.
A non-Aboriginal member, Marie-Eve worked up north one summer with Aboriginals. That experience convinced her to do her part in encouraging Aboriginals to enter the professions.
Before Christmas, we made an appeal to mentors’ companies for donations for gift certificates. Many of the students we reach in this program lack sufficient clothing for school. Several of our Calgary mentors dug deep from their own pockets, too, for substantial donations.
Would you guess that about 40 per cent of Aboriginal students drop out starting in Grade 6? For this reason, we focus much of our mentoring activity on elementary school groups, where we talk about science first and the professions second.
Urban poverty levels are higher for these kids than for their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Few Aboriginals who complete high school take post-secondary education, and of those, most enrol in programs related to the trades. Although some of our Aboriginal professionals have graduate degrees and have won scholarships, many entered the professions following work in the trades.
When our program began at St. Martha School in Calgary in the spring of 2007, 26 students self-identified as Aboriginal. But by September of the same year, 46 self-identified.
An increase of 75 per cent cannot be explained by growth alone. It appears that it had suddenly become cool — or at least acceptable — to be Aboriginal. Could our mentoring program have something to do with that?
At the University of Calgary, when an Aboriginal student receives a degree, an elder steps onto the convocation stage and presents the individual with a white feather in a case, adding recognition and honour to the achievement. Despite an increase in Aboriginal graduates at Alberta and Canadian universities, they remain very much underrepresented in the professions.
In Alberta and in Canada as a whole, Aboriginal young people make up the fastest growing segment of the under-18 age group. In a time of skilled labour shortages, they represent a tremendous resource.
There is no blueprint for what we are doing in the schools. Our professional mentors are telling their story, developing rapport and building trust. Mentors are talking about the exciting aspects of science. They are introducing possibilities and coaching on ways to make dreams come true with a career in the professions.
Sometimes, places go empty at summer science camps. By identifying Aboriginal kids with high interest and ability and by informing and encouraging them, we can arrange for some to attend those camps that APEGGA helps fund.
Many of you probably know that industry is keen to attract Aboriginal students who may go into the professions. If we help connect eager students with recruiting companies, valuable gains can occur on both sides.
The bottom line in all of the Aboriginal mentoring activities is that APEGGA’s program, working with even a fraction of our members, can make a big difference in the lives of Aboriginal kids — and boost the professional labour force at the same time.
The Gift of Books
In 2007 we piloted the Aboriginal mentoring program at St. Martha Elementary School in Calgary. While discussing the program with Daniel Danis, the principal, we learned the school library lacked books for the Aboriginal kids.
We were in discussion with SNC-Lavalin about the regular member mentoring program. When the company indicated interest in Aboriginal mentoring, our description of the needs in the library prompted them to donate $3,000 for a seed library of books on Aboriginal subjects.
The librarian at the school was able to purchase a good selection of relevant books from a private bookseller in Cochrane. In May 2008 we held a formal unveiling of the library with a plaque honouring the corporate gift.
It seems the library idea is catching on. We are now hoping to provide a small seed library of books on Aboriginal subjects at Father Lacombe, the Calgary high school where we have rolled out an Aboriginal mentoring program.
At Christmas, some of the companies employing our Calgary Aboriginal mentors donated money to assist in the purchase of small gifts for the children. Matrix has agreed that its donation of $600 could be used to set up a seed library at Father Lacombe. APEGGA has provided $1,000 as well.
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AN ELF IN THE ROOM |
If there are permit-holding com-panies or members interested in providing funding toward this library, please contact Arlene Lack, mentoring program coordinator, or me, Nancy Toth, Manager, Professional Development & Human Resources, for further information.