The STARs Mentor Program was developed and managed by one of Lane’s counselors, Ms. Dulberg, as a way to help incoming freshmen feel more comfortable with the school, as well as get them involved. This past school year was Dulberg’s final year at Lane, and she left the program in the hands of Ms. Carroll and Mr. Hoof.

Carroll and Hoof were prepared for the departure of Dulberg.

“I knew she was leaving, but I was unsure Ms. Carroll and I were taking over the program until much later in the school year,” Hoof said.

Dulberg made sure to leave as much information for the two rookie program directors for it to continue to be successful. Hoof and Carroll did what they could given the limited time and resources.

“I think we would have liked to have prepared for it a little better than we did, but we were both very busy at the end of last year. We met during our first week back at school to try to figure out what we needed to do for the mentor program, and have kind of just been learning what to do as we go,” Carroll said.

The two new program leaders have not made many changes since last year, but they did bring back a training program for the mentors. The program is known as “Freshman Connection” and took place during a week over the summer. This was an event that Lane hasn’t had in several years.

“A few of the mentors volunteered to help out with that and they did an awesome job planning activities that the freshmen thought were fun and engaging,” Carroll said.

Although the beginning of next year is far in the future, they are also looking towards changes they can make at the end of the 2014-2015 school year. One thing that this involves is getting the mentors interacting with their freshmen sooner in the year and connecting with them over social media.

“We’ve talked about having students apply to be mentors early in the school year so that when freshmen are accepted in February, the mentors will already be selected and can answer the freshman questions via Facebook or email,”  Carroll said.

“I would love to create a eat-lunch-with-your-mentee program. No student should ever have to eat lunch alone.  I want to create a culture at our school where if students see someone eating alone, their first thought is join that student,” Hoof said.

In addition to being mentored by current upperclassmen, freshmen are given the opportunity to take advantage of getting socially involved in the school. Carroll and Hoof have planned frequent freshman-exclusive events for the beginning of the school year. Something that the program has been really pushing this year is higher attendance to those events.

“We’ve had a tailgate party, dance, and movie night, and we’ve only had about 75 freshmen at each event. We would love for more students to attend the events,” Carroll said.

Students and administrators have found that incoming freshmen tend to find great comfort in having an upperclassman mentor to help navigate both the social and technical aspects of Lane. Carroll and Hoof hope to make more changes necessary to help freshmen thrive in what can be a scary new environment.