Aspire Scholars Program Brings High-Achieving Students Together With Mentors, Each Other
Riki McDaniel and his faculty mentor, Robert Watts, were connected through the Aspire Scholars program.
Meredith Wooten, director of the Center for Scholar Development with Pennoni Honors College, recognized that life at Drexel — especially for high-achieving students — rarely slows down. That’s why she founded the Aspire Scholars program, which is open to current sophomores in any departmental major and designed to provide opportunities to develop and clarify goals within a small community of peers and with guidance from chosen alumni or faculty.
Wooten’s desire to establish the program stemmed from her work with high-achieving students on fellowship applications, as many expressed regrets of not knowing about or taking advantage of available opportunities earlier. Even more struggled to articulate their motivations behind set academic and professional goals. The Aspire Scholars program aims to counter this regret by intervening early, and encouraging these students to question and communicate who they are and what they value most.
“The program allows us to identify and reward some of our most promising students early in their education, as well as to create a space in which they are challenged to do the work of reflection and building relationships and a knowledge of the self that will help deepen their intellectual engagement, connect with their communities of interest and foster greater authenticity and confidence,” Wooten said. “Ultimately, we hope to enable our scholars to push themselves to realize their potential at Drexel and beyond.”
The inaugural class of scholars were named for the 2016-2017 school year. Riki McDaniel, materials science and engineering ’20, was part of that first class and said that he came into the program with a rather vague notion of what he wanted to get out of it. That’s why he tried not to limit his search for a mentor through the program to any particular discipline.
“I had a general feeling that I wanted to get better at communication, but also get comfortable and start to figure out what I want to do after I’m done at Drexel,” he said.
McDaniel ended up selecting Robert Watts, an associate teaching professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, to help him achieve these goals, but has gotten much more out of the relationship. Watts has assisted McDaniel with everything from public speaking (by bringing him to a taping of The Moth Radio Hour) to teaching him soft skills that help him form good habits like sticking to exercise programs and journaling.
“I got lucky,” McDaniel said of his mentorship. “I met with Robert Watts, who happens to be a really open, easy-going guy who asks really good questions. So it’s been really helpful.”
McDaniel said the relationship he built with other students through the program was also helpful in that it was a chance to hash out what they were interested in doing long-term not just for themselves, but amongst each other.
“We would talk about things we were interested in doing eventually, things that we were currently doing now and how they might connect,” he said.