Dear Marquette community,
The numbers behind our Selig – Jaffee Marquette Mentors initiative are impressive: more than 1,600 student mentees served since the program’s inception in 2013-14, over 200 annual alumni-student matches and 96% of alumni mentors return to serve each year. Mentees in the program have a “mentor for life,” which is a distinctive promise that resonates with current and prospective students.
But it’s the people — our student mentees and alumni mentors — who can best explain the transformative power of the program that has been recognized as the “gold standard” in higher education mentoring. That’s why I went to Harley-Davidson Motor Co. to visit with the dynamic mentor-mentee pair of Gretchen Borden, Eng ’03 Grad ’07, and Gretchen Geiser, Eng ’22, to learn about their experience for the newest Campus Connections installment. We were joined by Dan DeWeerdt, Robert H. Radtke Endowed Director of the Selig – Jaffee Marquette Mentors, whose passionate advocacy and leadership have resulted in the program’s growth, impact and recognition.
I could immediately see why “the Gretchens” were a successful pairing — they fed off each other’s energy as they recalled the benefits of participating in the program. For Gretchen Borden, it was a novel way to give back to her alma mater and the engineering field. For Gretchen Geiser, she envisioned and built a pathway for her junior and senior years thanks to the insight and contacts her mentor shared. While I know the mentor-mentee relationship is at the heart of this high-impact practice, seeing it in action was powerful.
This past May, Dan Jaffee, a parent of two Marquette alumni and a mentor in the program, made a transformational gift to fund the program. As a result, the program has been renamed to honor Major League Baseball Commissioner Emeritus Bud Selig and Dan’s father, Dick Jaffee, two men who were influential in his life. Dan’s generosity makes it possible for future generations of Marquette students to participate in this program, which has become a differentiator for the university.
We recorded this episode of Campus Connections on the grounds of the new Davidson Park at the Harley-Davidson headquarters. It’s a beautiful space that is open to the public and home to a variety of community events. I encourage you to visit if you haven’t already.
If you have an idea for a future Campus Connections, please send it to president@marquette.edu.
President Kimo
