This summer, Christensen will complete his sixth summer as a mentor.  He also volunteers as the director of the mentor component of the Friends Program. Christensen helps others to become equally successful as mentors, and finds the work a nice complement to his professional duties at Bank of America, where he serves as Managing Director of Bank of America Equity Partners.

The Friends Program has three components: the students, the employers and the mentors.  Each student is assigned a mentor, and each mentor is given only one student to work with for the summer. 

While some organizations have mentoring programs for their summer interns, Christensen says such programs are typically designed for students that are in college, not high school.  Christensen likes the fact that the Friends Program is geared specifically to meeting the needs of high school students. 

“One of the biggest challenges we have with our students is dealing with the fact that they are coming out of a classroom environment and stepping into an unstructured adult environment where they have to deal with one thing all day long,” said Christensen.  For many of the students, it is their first time in a highly focused and predominantly adult environment.  Christensen counsels students on ways to cope with the pressures.

“I have not had to do as much with the students in terms of their dress, behavior or expectations as I had to do in the past,” said Christensen.  “Brother Phil has done a great job with the Corporate Experience class.  Before the Corporate Experience class, getting the students to dress appropriately was somewhat challenging, especially with the female interns.”

Despite the challenges, Christensen enjoys working with high school students.  “You expect adult type behavior from college interns,” said Christensen.  “One of the things I like is the refreshing naiveté and idealism of a high school junior who knows everything.  I am constantly amazed at how these kids know everything. I have gotten to the point in life where I know nothing.  But these kids are so amazing.  They are so fresh, so enthusiastic about life.  You have to guide them, and guide them without making them feel like you are guiding them.  It is a challenge, but it is exciting, and really a fulfilling experience.”

According to Christensen, the mentoring component of the Friends Program has evolved to a level where a full-time person is needed to manage and coordinate mentor relations.  For the present, however, Christensen assumes that responsibility.  He has developed criteria for selecting mentors, and he actively recruits prospective mentors for the program.  Once mentors have been selected, Christensen then works with Holy Trinity’s Vice President of Institutional Advancement, Tim Bopp, to match each student according to his or her interests, personality and gender with a mentor.  After the matches have been made, Christensen follows up with both the mentors and the students to see that their relationships are progressing positively.

Mentors are selected from a growing pool of friends of the school, and oftentimes, friends of friends.  Occasionally mentors are found in the organizations where the students are employed, but Christensen tries to avoid situations where a student’s supervisor is also the mentor. 

The mentoring component of the Friends Program is unstructured; however, mentors are expected to meet with students face to face at least once a week.  The Art Institute of Chicago, which is located in downtown Chicago, has free admission on Tuesdays and has become a favorite place for interns and mentors to meet.  Other meeting places include The Taste of Chicago, baseball games and lunch sites in the downtown area. Christensen tries to schedule one event each summer that brings all of the mentors and students together, but he admits finding a time that works for everyone is difficult.  Christensen is glad that the students also have an opportunity to host their mentors at Holy Trinity’s Open House, which is an annual event where students take their mentors on guided tours of the high school.

Christensen measures the success of the mentoring program by the connections made between the mentors and the students.  “Sometimes success becomes apparent a year or two after the summer program,” said Christensen. He believes the real benefit of the mentoring program is providing exposure, touching the students’ lives, and giving the students something they have not had before.

Christensen encourages mentors to talk about their own college experiences.  He has found that such discussions encourage students to think more seriously about college, especially in the early part of their senior year.

Despite the slowdown resulting from September 11^th, Holy Trinity has been successful in finding corporations willing to hire students for the summer.  In fact, the program has been so successful that several companies have re-hired past interns for the summer.  Christensen sees the re-hires as a mixed blessing.  “We are glad that our past interns have worked out successfully for those corporations, but we tell them that the goal is for them to hire new interns each summer,” said Christensen. 

Such discussions are one more indication of how the Friends Program benefits both the students and the companies that hire them.  Christensen gets great satisfaction from knowing that mentors are contributing to the success of the students on the job, at school and beyond.

The End

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