Fulfilling the University Promise: Enriching the Art of Mentoring with Counseling Methods and Empirical Evidence.

Over a quarter of a century ago the classic study by Astin (1975) reported that freshmen most likely to drop out of college were those with poor high school academic records, low aspirations, poor study habits, relatively uneducated parents, and small town origins. More recently, the national emergence of problems associated with immigration, substance abuse, poverty, and the migration of gang violence from urban to rural communities (Valencia, 2002) are impacting Astin’s college drop out framework. Following the publication of the findings by Astin and endeavoring to learn from their own attrition experiences, many colleges and universities incorporated innovative approaches to better meet the diverse and growing needs of their students. One particular campus of the California State University system is a comprehensive metropolitan university located in the center of California’s agricultural heartland. This campus is one of many universities incorporating approaches to better address the needs of their students and serves as the focus of this paper. Throughout the paper the campus will be identified as the University.