Montana State University

Diversity Awareness Office

Expanding Horizons

A Native American Mentoring Program

What is Expanding Horizons?

We are excited to tell you about a new mentoring program for Native students – Expanding Horizons, which will begin this fall with funding from the Office of the Provost. We want YOU to be part of it. With the consistent growth in the number of Native American students attending Montana State University and the newly revised core themes highlighting MSU’s commitment to Native American student support, we must as a university, broaden our approach to how we support Native students so that they are successful both at the university and in life.
We have put together a mentoring program that we feel will provide a helpful means of transitioning to a collegiate setting with a one-on-one mentorship and in turn, increase the retention and persistence of our Native students.

We are looking for amazing leaders, like you, on our campus to help us with this program. Below, we’ve outlined the program. If you are interested, please fill out the enclosed application and return it by June 15.

Our hope is to help our Native student population feel a connection to this wonderful university. If you are excited about the potential of our Native students, we highly encourage you to apply to be a mentor!
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us!

How does it work?

The program is pretty simple. 

The program targets new Native students who have applied and been accepted to MSU through cooperation with the Office of Admissions, as well as working on recruitment at Native American Student Preview Day, and if necessary, the Native American Student Orientation in the fall.  We want to build a cohort of 35 students that will learn both the layout and the processes at MSU, and the value of networking while also building a wide base of support as they navigate through the university system.
We are recruiting mentors from across the campus community and hope that by spreading a wide net, the rich variety of departments and people that make up our community will be represented. The focus of the program is to develop the skills needed for students to flourish in their new environment, as well as building the individual student’s sense of propriety at MSU.

Mentor applications will be screened by the selection committee, and selected mentors will attend a one day training to prepare them for the year-long commitment. There will be two dates for this training, still yet to be determined.

The program will run from late August through early May, with bi-monthly meetings. The first meeting of the month will be with the entire cohort, and the second meetings are meant to be one-on-one with mentor and mentee. The large group meetings will cover a topic or skill set and student support services on campus, and we generally will have a representative from an office on campus to present for these sessions. The second meeting will most often be left up to the mentor and mentee to plan, but we will encourage the meeting to be something fun, and when possible related to the group meeting.

Click here to download your application - when you're done, you can send it back to us. We'll let everyone know when mentor selection is complete - which should be by the end of June.