Evidence-Based Practice in the Youth Mentoring Field

With many landmark mentoring research studies being released, the time was ripe in 2009 for an extended dialogue on the role of research in the mentoring field and how mentoring practitioners, policymakers and funders can use existing research to improve programs and outcomes for youth participants.

Michael Garringer of the National Mentoring Center summarized the 2009 Summer Institute in a factsheed for the US Department of Education Mentoring Resource Center. >> Download

“Mentoring professionals are faced with a daunting task,” says Institute Director, Thomas Keller. “They often come to research with the mindset of ‘What does the research say? What should we be doing?’  They expect definitive answers and clear guidance. However, research is rarely clear-cut and straightforward, and it is important to get beyond the headlines or the quick takeaways. Professionals need to be empowered as skilled and nuanced consumers of research. That’s the type of professional development we are trying to facilitate with the Summer Institute.”

2009 Research Fellows

Thomas Keller, Ph.D., Director of the Summer Institute

The Duncan and Cindy Campbell Professor for Children, Youth, and Families with an Emphasis on Mentoring in the School of Social Work at Portland State University. He is also Director of the PSU Center for Interdisciplinary Mentoring Research. Professor Keller studies the development and influence of mentoring relationships in school and community settings and the role of parent involvement in mentoring interventions. Prior to earning his Ph.D., he worked for several years with a Big Brothers Big Sisters affiliate in Seattle as a caseworker, supervisor, and program director.

David L. DuBois, Ph.D.

Professor in the Division of Community Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois—Chicago. He has authored many landmark studies on youth mentoring, including a meta-analytic review on the effectiveness of youth mentoring programs. He is co-editor of the  Handbook of Youth Mentoring. Professor DuBois co-chaired the National Research Summit on Mentoring and co-authored the National Research Agenda for Youth Mentoring. He is conducting NIH-funded research on the GirlPOWER! program and has been a WT Grant Distinguished Fellow in residence at Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. He has mentored a child as a Big Brother.

Janis Kupersmidt, Ph.D.

President and CEO of innovation Research and Training (iRT), which conducts research and creates products and services to enhance the well-being of youth, families, communities, and organizations. Formerly a professor of psychology at UNC—Chapel Hill, she is an expert in the social and emotional development of children and focuses on program development and translational research addressing substance abuse, delinquency, and dropout prevention. She is the Principal Investigator on an NICHD-funded project to develop Mentoring Central, a web-based mentor training program. She also has contracted with MENTOR to develop the Third Edition of the Elements of Effective Practice. 

Michael Nakkula, Ed.D.

Practice Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania . His research focuses on integrating counseling, mentoring, and educational processes in urban schools to create contexts that allow students to thrive. His projects include Project IF (Inventing the Future), a strength-based youth development initiative, and a longitudinal study of Early College High Schools funded by the Gates Foundation. Dr. Nakkula works with many national organizations to create applied research strategies to study developmental and educational initiatives. He has created measures to assess mentor and protégé perspectives on the quality of youth mentoring relationships.

Andrea Taylor, Ph.D.

Director of Training in the Center for Intergenerational Learning, Clinical Assistant Professor in the College of Health Professions--Division of Public Health, and Senior Research Associate in the Institute for Survey Research at Temple University . She has authored several publications on intergenerational mentoring as an approach to promoting positive youth development and preventing substance abuse and school failure. Dr. Taylor is the developer of Across Ages, an intergenerational mentoring program that has been designated as an evidence-based model in the National Registry of Effective Program Practices and has been widely replicated.

2009 Guest Speakers

Harold Briggs, Ph.D.

Professor in the School of Social Work at Portland State University . He has published extensively on the use of research evidence in practice, addressing topics such as evidence-based practice, evidence-based management, evidence supported treatments, and practice based evidence in the fields of child welfare, children’s mental health, and juvenile justice.

Carla Herrera, Ph.D.

Senior Policy Researcher for Public/Private Ventures, a national non-profit research and policy organization. Dr. Herrera has conducted numerous studies and written influential reports on various types of mentoring programs. She directed a recent national, multi-site, randomized control design evaluation of Big Brothers Big Sisters school-based mentoring programs and is currently working with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America to enhance their school-based mentoring model.  

Michael Karcher, Ph.D., Ed.D.

Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at University of Texas-San Antonio. He is an expert on cross-age peer mentoring in schools. He recently reported on his “Study of Mentoring in the Learning Environment (SMILE),” a randomized control design evaluation of school-based mentoring in conjunction with Communities in Schools. Dr. Karcher is the author of numerous articles on mentoring in school settings, and he is co-editor of the Handbook of Youth Mentoring.