College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Keith Fishberg
Marsinah Meyer
Rose Robertson
Jessica Giorgi
Kristine Nakamura
Michael Wesselhoft
Nathalie Manet
Janelle Rasco
Jennifer Williams

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
In an effort to evoke social change in the community, for our project we decided to reach out to our community’s youth as mentors. On Wednesday March 24th, the nine of us spent the day with thirty enthusiastic students from High Tech Middle School and hiked 1.5 miles to the summit of Cowles Mountain. We were each paired up with three to four students for the duration of the hike. This provided a vehicle were each of the students could voice their questions and concerns about college as well as higher education overall. In addition, the hike itself expressed the important and valuable role that nature plays in our community. By encouraging these students to respect our environment and the animals, which inhabit it, our society will benefit as a whole, allowing our surrounding to flourish for generations to come.

This project would not have been possible without the help and support from High Tech Middle. High Tech Middle, which opened in August 2003 directly across from High Tech High, is a charter school located in Point Loma, California. Its unique atmosphere provides students with small class sizes and personalized one-on-one instruction from teachers. Their emphasis is focused on applying classroom learning to real world situations. Gary Jacobs, Board chairman for High Tech Middle, says “Our idea is hands-on experience for the students…so we give them strong academics in class and allow them to use those fundamentals.” Students who continue on to High Tech High look forward to participating in an internship program where they are matched with a workplace mentor in a company that matches their career goals.

After meeting with Dean of Students, Mr. Ray Trinidad and other staff members to discuss our ideas, we set off to incorporate our team project with the High Tech Middle’s after-school program called After-School All-Stars. The program provides quality- comprehensive after-school programs to young people who need a safe, supervised, and educational environment from 3:00 - 6:00 p.m. each day. After-School All-Stars started as the Inner-City Games Foundation (ICGF) in 1995 when Arnold Schwarzenegger, now Governor of California, set out to give inner-city youth positive alternatives to drugs, gangs and violence.

In order to get the word out about our project, we used several methods of publicity. Our first major task was to convince twenty children to come hiking with a bunch of college students. We posted several posters throughout the campus and main hallway of the school, to create a stir for the event. We also sent out flyers and permission slips to the parents along with the middle school’s weekly newsletter. News of the event also spread by way of the school’s website: http://www.hightechhigh.org. In addition, we utilized our group’s connections with local news media by posting the event on several community web-boards, including NBCSanDiego.com and SDnews.com. Furthermore, we also submitted a news pitch and media alert to The Daily Aztec. The response to the project was overwhelming! Instead of the original anticipated twenty, we ended up hiking with a total of thirty students.

Another key factor in organizing and implementing this project was paying close attention to specific ethical frameworks, in particular Social Contract Theory, Land Ethic, Deontology and Utilitarianism. The land ethic extends a moral conscience and responsibility to benefit the community and the environment. With this hike, we were able to exercise these theories in practice. We also had a guest speaker, Mr. Paul Whipby, who is a Park Ranger for Mission Trails Parks. Mr. Whipby spoke with the students before the hike about the history of Cowles Mountain and the importance of preserving our community’s natural habitats. Our project also incorporates the utilitarian theory in by making small sacrifices of our time and resources; in doing so, we were able to produce many favorable outcomes for the students as well as the community.

In measuring the success of the hike, we decided the best way to track the impact of the project was by means of individual surveys distributed before and after the hike took place. The initial surveys, which were included with the flyer, permission slips and an SDSU brochure, were filled out by each student in order to give us an idea of the specific questions or concerns the students had. At the conclusion of the hike, we handed out a second set of questionnaires, which allowed students to voice their feedback as a result of the hike. This not only pointed out the strengths and success of our project, but also brought out aspects that could be improved for future hiking events. Due to the overall success of the SDSU Mentorship Hike, High Tech Middle hopes to continue this event as part of their regular after-school field-trips. As a result, future Management 356 groups are encouraged to contact High Tech Middle directly if they are interested in continuing this rewarding experience.