The UDReads program, which offers University students the opportunity to mentor children in area schools, is just one of the campus-based programs operated
by the Delaware Mentoring Council, an umbrella organization based in CHEP's Delaware Center for Teacher Education.

Established in 1998 by then-Gov. Tom Carper, the council receives its administrative support from the University through the center, which employs its director, Theresa Clower. She also serves as director of UD's AmeriCorps-VISTA volunteer program, which has a unique partnership with CHEP.

"We're the only AmeriCorps-VISTA program in the United States to guarantee a stipend and other support for graduate school after your year of volunteer service," Clower says. "We've been extremely successful, and we're attracting attention as a national model."

Nationally, Americorps-VISTA pays its volunteers--most of them recent college graduates--a stipend during their year of service and an education award, which can be used for graduate school or to pay previous student loans, after completing the year. The volunteers who work in the UD program get a bonus. If they complete their service and then are accepted into one of several CHEP graduate programs, the College guarantees them a graduate assistantship and a stipend for living expenses while earning their master's degree.

"It's a win-win for the students and the College," Clower says. "It's enabled us to recruit our VISTA volunteers and our CHEP graduate students from the cream of the crop. "

About 30 AmeriCorps-VISTA volunteers work in the UD program each year, most serving as mentors or mentoring coordinators in 20-25 schools throughout Delaware.

For example, Tom DeWire, the volunteer who coordinated UDReads last school year, also oversaw the expansion of another campus program, MentorWorks. In that program, CHEP faculty and staff mentor children at Brookside Elementary School in Newark, Del.

More information about the Delaware Mentoring Council is available on the web site [www.delawarementoring.org]. Information about AmeriCorps and related national service programs is available at [www.americorps.org].