Volume 12, Number 3, 2004
Underrepresented students who are seeking specialized services to help them succeed in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics can turn to the College's Fortune Program, which has been a resource for students for more than 10 years.
The program provides academic, advisement and career-related services. Even before freshmen enter the College, the program helps prepare them for the transition from high school to higher education.
"I feel that the program met all of my needs--and more," Ama Acquah, BE '00, says. As a student from an ethnically and culturally diverse background and with exceptional grades, Acquah received a merit-based scholarship from the Fortune Program. In addition to the financial support, Acquah says the program's Summer Bridge Academy, a residential program that helps incoming students prepare for college, was especially helpful.
"The Summer Bridge Academy gave me insight into what college is really like," she says. "I got credit for the courses that I took, and I was taught how to manage my time in college."
Another Fortune graduate and a current MBA student in the College, Darius Adair, BE '00, also praises the summer program for allowing him "to meet like-minded business students, as well as faculty, in a smaller, more cordial setting and ... alleviating most of the culture shock that many students experience."
As they continued as undergraduates, Adair and Acquah say, the Fortune Program's summer internships were particularly beneficial.
Acquah credits her academic mentor, Joyce L. Hart, the program's coordinator, for "pointing me in the right direction." Internships with MBNA America and Chase Manhattan banks helped lead to her current job as a business analyst for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Acquah says.
Adair, who spent three summers as an intern at J.P. Morgan, says, "At graduation, I feel I was better prepared than most, having already been exposed to the inner workings of an international organization."
Recently, the Fortune Program has undergone a rejuvenation that highlights academic mentoring and professional development as well as scholarships. To ensure both academic and professional success for its students, the program is focusing on three goals:
The Fortune Program began in 1993, when the University asked Terry Whittaker to replicate the College of Engineering's highly successful RISE (Resources to Insure Successful Engineers) Program for the business college.
"At the time, UD realized that significant student populations were underrepresented in the Lerner College of Business and Economics," says Whittaker, who now is the University's assistant vice provost for student diversity and success. "Only 4 percent of the student population belonged to underrepresented groups. Today, that number is up to 12 percent, but Delaware's general population is up to 29 percent for these population groups. The demographics show that there's a shift to a more-diverse population. Therefore, college-age students should be more diverse."
For many business students from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, going to college has meant living and working in unfamiliar territory and, as a result, feeling alienated. Those who are the first in their families to go to college, for example, can find the adjustment especially difficult.
To help students acclimate to the college curriculum, the program recommends that incoming freshmen take seven credit hours during their first summer after high school. Additionally, the College's Academic and Professional Development Center offers advisement for freshmen and sophomores ready to choose a major.
Peer support groups are set up to motivate each student toward academic and professional excellence, and tutorial sessions teach time-management and study skills, as well as providing overviews of a student's required courses.
To increase the number of business students who are employable upon graduation, the Fortune Program highlights professional development through internships, summer jobs and corporate mentors. Such initiatives benefit employers as well as the students who are their prospective employees, according to Whittaker.
"Companies deal with a more diverse population, so employees need to know how to relate well in the business world with people of different backgrounds," he says. "Companies were active in our program's development because they knew what they needed in an employee."
"Through the Fortune Program, many students received permanent positions with their mentors or sponsored internships and have moved up to executive levels," Hart says. "And, now, we see more of them either coming back or attending other colleges to obtain their master's degrees in business administration."
--Carla Koss