William Jewell College

By Rebecca Winters/Liberty

It would be tough for a freshman to slip through the cracks at William Jewell College. That's because this 1,400-student Baptist liberal-arts school in Liberty, Mo., has caulked up every crevice where a newcomer might stumble. Jewell's mentor program reaches out to incoming students even before they pack their bags. Its introductory freshmen seminar has all the first-year students highlighting their copies of St. Augustine's Confessions on the same night. And the college assigns all newcomers as many as five contacts--two faculty members and three students--to check on their adjustment.

"There are so many people looking out for you here it would be almost impossible to sit in your room and sulk," says Melanie Anstine, a sophomore elementary-education major from Holden, Mo., who is mentoring seven freshmen.

Eliminating the sulk factor is exactly the point of the school's interventionist efforts to nurture newcomers, says Kathy Sheppard Nasteff, 36, the dean for first-year students. She is one of the two faculty contacts for each freshman; the other is the student's academic adviser. "These young adults are entering a whole new world," says Nasteff. "We want to help them find an immediate comfort zone." It seems to be working. Since the mentor program started four years ago, retention rates at Jewell have risen to 86%, from 72%.

The process starts in May when high school seniors and transfer students get a letter from a student mentor, the first of several communications they will receive over the summer. The mentors, selected through a rigorous application process, are sophomores or juniors who still have vivid memories of the emotional turbulence of their freshman year. Anstine, an A student in high school, recalls the shock of getting her first college D. "I bawled," she says.

Each mentor contacts eight to 10 incoming students and their parents. They probe for key information: whose parents just got divorced, whose family is having trouble paying tuition and who is petrified of sorority rush (42% of Jewell students join fraternities and sororities). The mentors answer questions like "Should I bring a microwave?" or "What's the reading load?" They also find out little details from Mom and Dad, like their daughter's favorite candy. The mentors leave the favorite candy in front of their charge's door that first day on campus, with other goodies like a William Jewell car sticker and a handmade welcome sign. "It's a way of saying, 'You have a friend here already and you haven't even finished unpacking,'" says mentor Erin Stein, a sophomore.

After the mini-fridges and extra-long sheets are unloaded, the books bought and the parents pried away, the freshmen meet their mentor groups for an event called Adventure Day. Upperclassmen lead the groups and a faculty or staff member through a series of team-building exercises designed to help the "first years" overcome their shyness. In one exercise they must get every team member and a full glass of water to an "island" several feet away by swinging on a rope. In another they have to turn over a small tarp they are standing on, without touching the imaginary "poisonous goo" outside the tarp. "You get comfortable with a group of people really quickly when you have to squeeze onto a 2-by-4 with them," says Stein.

Each exercise is followed by a discussion of how it relates to such typical freshman experiences as meeting seemingly impossible challenges and identifying human and material resources.

As students settle in over the weekend, they meet the rest of their five-person intervention team. In addition to their mentor, their academic adviser and dean for first-year students Nasteff, the freshmen are introduced to that traditional student counselor, the resident adviser, and one more peer contact that reflects the college's Baptist background--a student called a shepherd, whose role is spiritual guidance. That guidance can mean helping freshmen study for midterms or praying with them. Jewell's campus is ecumenical--no religion courses or pledge of faith is required, and the student-senate leader is Jewish--but the school's Christian focus is evident. You're more apt to see young people praying over their dinners in the dining hall than you might at a state school, and classroom discussions can get heated when biology majors are also fierce creationists. Jewell is also 90% white, with most of its students hailing from the Midwest.

Many of the first-year students' first exploration of different worldviews will come in the required freshman seminar called The Responsible Self. "It sounds like a course in shampooing your hair," groans junior Andy Johnson, who nevertheless feels the course "taught me a lot about myself."

Students read books like the Bhagavad Gita and John Stuart Mill's On Liberty with the goal of looking at themselves and their society in new ways. The one-semester course has achieved mythic status among Jewell students. Freshmen sweat it; sophomores freak the freshmen out about it; juniors grudgingly approve of it; and seniors reflect on it as life changing.

Stein checked in on a few of the freshmen she was mentoring after their first day of Responsible Self last week, a deed she will repeat throughout the year--formally with gatherings for ice cream or pizza, and informally with quick hellos in the dining hall. "They screamed my name across the quad," Stein says. "It's hard to believe these are the same quiet people who stared back at me at the beginning of the weekend. I guess they feel at home." Mission accomplished.