Meet our 2023-2024 RAMP Mentors!

Mentors are responsible for fostering an environment of peer academic support and encouragement for all new first year students for the 2023-2024 academic year. Through extensive support and mentor education, mentors will acquire/refine the skills and capacity necessary to manage a group of “mentees” of approximately 30-35 students. Mentors assist these students in transitioning to college through regular 1:1 meetings as well as small group meetings and even through offering drop-in hours. Mentors are supportive, approachable, and act as positive “real” models throughout the academic year, ultimately enriching the college experience for first year students. Mentors work closely with students, faculty and staff associated with the Cal Poly Humboldt Learning Communities (see below). We also imagine First Year and College Based Mentors working closely to bridge first year students into their second year and the continuing support offered through College Based Mentoring.

First Year Mentors work closely with students, faculty and staff associated with the Cal Poly Humboldt programs and Learning Communities:

• Educational Opportunity Program (EOP)
  Mentors work with first year students admitted through EOP and will work closely with EOP Advisors to offer support and guidance. 

• Place-Based Learning Communities
  Mentors work with first year students enrolled in any of the Place-Based Learning Communities (PBLC) listed below, and will work during Welcome Week (Orientation) and other programming associated with each PBLC. There are both major-based and interest-based PBLCs.

• Among Giants: Biology, Botany or Zoology majors. Mentors will work with first year students who are interested in exploring the biodiversity of coastal redwood forests and prairies– sampling microbes, identifying plants, and detecting cryptic mammals– and learn how the Wiyot and Yurok tribes have interacted with these species and ecosystems since time immemorial.

• Baduwa’t to Bay: EEnvironmental Resources Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Energy Systems Engineering. Mentors will work with first year students who are introduced to engineering design within the Baduwa’t (Mad River) Watershed. Students explore water quality, river restoration, renewable energy and other local design solutions addressing global issues.

• Creando Raíces (Creating Roots): Community Organizing, Ethnic Studies. Mentors will work with freshmen who are interested in joining Cal Poly Humboldt’s movement for Ethnic Studies. First year students will learn about ways to bring issues from their classes into every aspect of the real world. Each course builds and expands upon what they already know and believe while deepening their appreciation and awareness of justice, liberation, and gain career development opportunities along the way. 

• Creative Coast: Art. Mentors work with first year students who are interested in being introduced to art resources on campus and in the wider Humboldt community including public art, galleries, museums and local arts non-profits through field trips and hands-on learning opportunities. First year students are offered guaranteed enrollment in studio art and art history classes.
  
  
• Dreamscapes: Open for first year students who are interested in social and political change and are not already in a major-based Place-Based Learning Community. Mentors will work with first year students who are interested in exploring the problems of today from the perspective that radical change is possible. First year students will build connections on campus and out in the community.
  
  
• Educators for Social Justice: Liberal Studies Elementary Education (LSEE) and Child Development. Mentors will work with first year students who are interested in discovering how learning about issues of education and social justice today, can shape our futures tomorrow. All of the handpicked instructors believe in the same goal: making the schooling experience equitable and empowering for all students. 
  
  
• Food Futures: Open for first year students who are interested in food sovereignty and are not already in a major-based Place-Based Learning Community. Mentors will work with first year students who are interested in the concept of food sovereignty, the right of people to have control over their own food systems
  
  
• Global Humboldt Program: Undeclared. Mentors will work with undeclared first year students who are still figuring out what their major will be. This “globally” themed learning community offers them an interdisciplinary introduction to that world. 
  
  
• Green to Gold: Businees. Mentors will work with first time students who are interested in creating relationships in a cohort environment focused on the global green revolution that seeks to balance the needs of people, planet, and profits. 
  
  
• Healthy Humboldt: Open for first-year students who are interested in pre-medical pathways or who are interested in health and well-being and are not already in a major-based Place-Based Learning Community. Mentors will work with first time students who are interested in learning how to support a healthy and thriving community. 

• Klamath Connection: Fire Science, Fisheries Biology, Forestry, Environmental Science and Management, Rangeland Resource Science, and Wildlife majors. Mentors work with first year students who are interested in exploring environmental and social justice issues associated with the region, including conflicts over water rights, natural resource conservation, and issues affecting Yurok and Karuk communities.

• People & Planet: Open for first-year students who are interested in intersectional environmentalism and are not already in a major-based Place-Based Learning Community. Mentors will work with first year students who are interested in learning how sustainability is both local and global, while addressing specific case studies in fields like agriculture, clean energy, and climate justice.
  
  
• Representing Realities: Mathematics, Computer Science, Data Science, Geospatial Science & Technology, and Software Engineering. Mentors will work with first year students who are interested in exploring a variety of concepts to help to understand and represent the world around us and all of our different realities -- and to use these to better solve problems.
  
  
• Rising Tides:  Marine Biology or Oceanography majors. Mentors will work with first year students who are interested in comparing both the cultures and marine life in Humboldt & Trinidad Bays! These two marine environments allow students to explore how the Wiyot Tribe and Trinidad Rancheria have interacted with these ecosystems alongside social and environmental policy in both areas.

• Stars to Rocks: Biochemistry, Chemistry, Geology, and Physics & Astronomy. Mentors work with first year students who are interested in exploring the interdisciplinary nature of their majors, and how they can not become an expert in one without understanding the others. Physics describes the forces acting in our universe, shaping the chemical reactions that form the geological matter of our planet.