Present: Harrison, Tjossem, Grey, Swartz, Woods, Patki, Williams-Molett, Rivera, Hrasky

1. Meeting was called to order by Hrasky at 12:00 p.m.
2. The agenda item set for discussion: The Posse Mentoring Program at Grinnell (three Grinnell Posse mentors attended this meeting: Elizabeth Queathem, Frank Thomas, and Monica Chavez-Silva)
3. A fair amount of discussion surrounded how students are selected for Posse Scholarships. Frank Thomas and David Harrison, both past participates in the Posse selection, provided their insights into this process. It was suggested that individuals making the selections take the opportunity to not only select students who they felt would be a good match for Grinnell but to also help to put student’s minds at ease concerning Grinnell College (because it is in such a different environment than they may otherwise have experienced). Monica wondered if more time could be spent to figure out which students really wanted to seriously attend Grinnell College. David mentioned that it was really easy to get excited about many of these students after meeting them but the academic information provided about students had to be discussed as well before final selections were made by our group.
4. All three mentors commented on the importance of working on and stressing the writing and reading demands of Grinnell College with their groups. They also indicated how important it was to have discussions about what their students are personally dealing with in Grinnell’s environment; in other words, Posse students need to work through issues that perhaps most other Grinnell students do not need to have addressed. The challenges that Posse students deal with when they go home and talk with their peers about the academic experience at Grinnell and how it may compare to institutions that their peers attend (all the Posse students realized how much harder they are working at Grinnell in comparison to their peers at other schools). The reality that the amount of reading and writing demands at Grinnell are so much more intense than other schools. Also getting across to the Posse students that it really is appropriate to go and see their professors at Grinnell (again so many of their peers made the choice to attend very large public schools and spending time with professors is not the norm in these environments). And also getting across to their Posse groups that you have to attend class--this is not an environment where you can succeed if you miss a lot of classes (their peers at other schools are missing class and getting by). There were some concerns noted by the mentors surrounding the summer training in NYC; a feeling that they (the mentors) would like to have been more aware of their role/expectations; the opportunity to be aware of these expectations before finding out at the training in NYC. Frank also noticed and Liz and Monica agreed that much of the training manual that they were given by Posse appears to be geared toward large, public school environments vs. life on a small campus and wondered if the manual could be updated to include both small and large school environments. 
5. Meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m.

--Tami Hrasky