No data present at this time

• Over the past five years, the HOPE Program was offered as an after-school program with general tutoring and various enrichment activities and field trips. The challenges we faced with the after-school format included: a) The students come from multiple, different classes and many are thus less well known to the HOPE teachers (re: academic/social strengths and weaknesses, learning preferences) than are the students assigned to these teachers during the regular school day; b) Students are more likely to be engaged by dedicated teachers who see them on a daily basis, vs. just twice a week in the afternoons; c) Many high school teachers are uncomfortable tutoring subjects which are not a part of their official expertise; d) Students often have other competing after-school activities such as clubs, athletics, care of siblings, etc.; e) Although we have had access to various innovative biomedical science curricula (e.g. via the UM School of Education), nearly all are designed for serial, in-class learning.
• Continued partner engagement and continued funding. To date our partners have been mostly very engaged. However in this time of limited budgets, maintaining and growing both the financial and in-kind contributions (e.g. volunteered time of faculty and staff to talk about specialties), is an ongoing challenge, particularly for a program which may not produce actual students admitted to these very competitive professional schools or units for years to come. This type of pipeline effort is labor intensive and non-income generating. In addition, the HOPE Program was not awarded the HHMI 5-year grant and given our University budget situation, we will need to continually seek outside funding to effectively continue aspects of this program.

Back to University of Michigan Medical School