The Center for Intercultural Learning and Community Engagement’s two programs, Tutor-Mentor and Literacy Connections, received a record amount of service requests this year. 

Program Director Kate Caffery said, 1,4000 requests for Tutor-Mentor services have been made this semester.
 

“That is the most we have ever had,” she said. “That is more than double what we had last year.”

Senior Erica Fox, a Tutor-Mentor student coordinator, said the program works with a variety of schools.

“We help hook up community partners—elementary schools, middle-schools, high schools, we work with public and private schools, along with some after school programs—with different volunteers from St. Thomas,” Fox said.

Graduate student Sarah Farnes has been volunteering with Tutor-Mentor for 13 semesters.

“The fact that we partner with a lot of Catholic schools, I get that outlet too,” Farnes said. “I get to live my faith every day.”

Junior Joe DeMeyer said the program helps him develop teamwork skills, and he enjoys interacting with the children in the program.

“I absolutely loved it my freshman year,” DeMeyer said. “This year I had to do my Business 200, but I look to continue past that. My motives for volunteering are not the Business 200.”

Literacy Connections has also seen increased student interest.

“We had maybe 40 people interested in doing the program, (but) we can take 25 students,” senior Mirella Maxwell, a student coordinator for Literacy Connections said. “It has been double what we had interest-wise last year.”

Maxwell said the economy forced some schools the university would have worked with to discontinue programs this semester.

“Our program works with two different schools. We are not working with one of the schools temporarily for this semester,” Maxwell said.

Caffrey said some schools have been forced to make hard decisions.

“We run into that each semester, where schools close their doors,” she said. “What we find sometimes is unfortunate. It tends to be some of the Catholic schools.”

The increase in service requests is a result of the programs being reactive to community needs, Fox said.

“We base ourselves on community needs,” she said. “So we take their needs first and then ask students for their availability and try to place them into the community’s needs.”

Literacy Connections has 19 paid student positions, and Tutor-Mentor has 12 paid positions, Caffrey said.

The Tutor-Mentor program has around 150 to 200 volunteers, Fox said.

Patrick Roche can be reached at roch6667@stthomas.edu.