At Hopkins, students cram for mid-terms, snatch sleep when they can and wash it all down with Aramark subs from CharMar.
At a high school just a few blocks away from Hopkins, students go home to no running water, to parents who cannot make ends meet, and have to dodge a neighborhood filled with temptations and bad influences - only to go back and take an exam the next day.
Baltimore's diverse population is a double-edged sword. As different cultures and lifestyles prevail, so too do socioeconomic juxtapositions. The Incentive Mentoring Program (IMP) aims to tie these different populations together.
"The goal of the program is to create connections in the community," Sarah Hemminger, Chief Executive Officer and President of IMP, said. "We view both the high school students and the Hopkins students as extraordinary people who are in extraordinary situations. Our goal is to help connect high school students and university students so that they can support one another in mutually growing."
Hemminger, a Hopkins graduate student studying biomedical engineering, started IMP at Hopkins's East Baltimore Campus in 2004. Hemminger brought in volunteers to Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, where the principal had identified 15 students who were at risk of failing their classes.
These students were not performing academically, constantly missing class and were involved in gang violence, drug abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence and homelessness. IMP worked hard guide these students on the right path, graduate from high school and go to college.
"We enroll students in their freshman year who are struggling academically, and we give them a family . . . and that IMP family supports the students in whatever way possible," Hemminger said.
The "family" model is what makes the IMP Program unique and successful. Each struggling student is assigned to a family of ten volunteers who helps students in all aspects of their lives from academics and career planning to life skills and family support. Family members' duties include tutoring, SAT preparation, home renovations, giving rides to school and packing lunches.
"[The family model] builds this family of people where the Hopkins volunteers have to depend on one another in a tight team to actually accomplish the goal, which is to support the student. It is very special and beautiful that you've got Hopkins students and high school students all with one singular common goal, which is growth," Hemminger said.
Each family has a Head of Household, who serves as a leader for the family. There are also Grandparents who supervises a group of families and helps the Heads of Household when needed.
Since its origin seven years ago, 97 percent of IMP's students have graduated from high school, while 94 percent of these students have matriculated to college. However, the high school students are not the only ones reaping the benefits, as the mentoring program is also an eye-opening experience for the volunteers that work hard to assist its students.
"Everyone is a mentor and everyone is a mentee," Hemminger said. "Each family member comes in expecting to learn something from their students, and each of the students expecting to learn something from the volunteer."
While many successful students are well on their way, IMP is constantly bringing more cohorts of disadvantaged and struggling students in and quickly working with them to get on a path to a brighter future.
Recently, IMP's growth has been exponential, with well over 400 volunteers involved - and the number keeps growing. 80 percent of the volunteers are Hopkins affiliated, and the proportion of non-Hopkins members of the Baltimore community is also growing.
IMP volunteers range from students to lawyers to medical professionals. This diversity helps enrich the resources that IMP can provide to its students. The volunteers help IMP to give assistance beyond the classroom, giving services from healthcare advice to legal support to students.
In Fall 2010, previous IMP success afforded it an opportunity to expand. The organization started to more actively recruit undergrads from the Homewood campus to help start a new branch of the mentoring program at the Academy for College and Career Exploration (ACCE), a public high school in Hampden.
The Homewood volunteers have been an invaluable addition to the IMP family, according to Hemminger.
"Having a close [age] gap is very helpful because the challenges that the Hopkins students and the high school students are facing are not that different," Hemminger said.
She noted that all students must face failure and the biggest challenge is trying again when things do not work out. This universal phenomenon links the students together.
Even in the short span of a year, Hemminger has noticed a clear impact from the relationship between students and undergraduate volunteers.
"A test at Hopkins might seem like a stressful thing, but when you are talking to a student who may be living in a boarded up home without electricity or water, and they have to go to school and have to take a test as well, it kind of puts things in a perspective," Hemminger said. `"It just gives people a common goal to unite around, as a high school student and as a college student, your goals are usually more self-focused, so having a common goal that is not about you is a powerful thing."
IMP has also entrusted a great amount of responsibility to its undergraduate members, which has also been a learning experience for the volunteers. Many Homewood students are Heads of Household or Grandparents.
"The biggest challenge is developing leaders," Hemminger said. "The Grandparent oversees 40 volunteers and seven students when the program is at scale, and technically that Grandparent is running like a major student group essentially. What's critical for our students is... we really need to work with our volunteers to develop them as leaders to do some really tough stuff... Motivate their team, inspire them as well as be very clear of how to execute. Especially when you are an undergrad, it can be a new experience for young people."
Undergraduate IMP leaders can attest to this challenge.
"The biggest challenge of being an HOH is managing my peers and people who are older than me," Kerry Moriarty, a sophomore and Head of Household for IMP, wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. "It's tricky telling people your own age what to do, so developing a strategy to organize my family is the hardest part. Being an HOH has helped me develop as a leader. I've learned to collaborate with my peers. I've taken on a lot of responsibility and my family members rely on me. I'm constantly being introduced to new people and having to adjust our family's plan to accommodate for new members and obstacles."
The undergrad involvement will only help IMP flourish, according to Hemminger.
"The undergrads, because they are younger, I think they're open to trying all kinds of new things and strategies and they're adaptable, and that's what you need to be to actually, eventually succeed in the process," she said. "That's an amazing addition to the organization."
