The Posse Foundation, founded in 1989, is a non-profit organization that identifies high school students with academic excellence and leadership potential and connects them to some of the country’s prestigious colleges and universities. While these students, known as “Posse Scholars,” are matched to partnered schools and trained by the Foundation, institutions award Scholars four-year, full-tuition leadership scholarships. Scholars are then sent in groups of 10 on campuses where they become catalysts for individual and community development. The Foundation’s goals include: expanding the pool of students from diverse backgrounds that top institutions can recruit from, helping those institutions foster more inclusive campuses, and ensuring that Scholars excel academically and graduate in four years to go on to take on leadership positions in the workforce. Essentially, Posse’s primary purpose is to train the leaders of tomorrow.
Lafayette’s Posse program has a long, rich history with the Foundation, and this fall we will be welcoming our 16th D.C. Posse and 20th N.Y. Posse to Easton!
A Posse Mentor information session will be held on Monday, January 25th at 12:00pm. Please RSVP through this form to receive the Zoom link. This will be an informal session during which interested candidates will hear from several current Posse Mentors about the role, and there will be an opportunity for Q & A.
Scholars participate in weekly meetings with their Posse over the duration of their first year and sophomore year. These meetings are led by the Mentor. Mentors also meet bi-weekly with individual Posse Scholars to check in as they adjust to the college experience, and regularly interact with their group in other informal and community-building ways as well. Even though the mandatory weekly meetings end after a Scholar’s sophomore year, it is not uncommon for Posses to continue meeting informally with their mentor.
Having dedicated faculty mentors as part of Lafayette’s Posse program is critical to our ongoing success. Mentors are compensated for the first two years of the role. While the Posse Foundation generally prefers tenured faculty to serve as mentors, in some cases student-facing administrators have also served as mentors. Interested individuals should submit a Letter of Interest (1 page maximum), cc’ing the Department Head or Program Chair, to olinm@lafayette.edu by Monday, February 1st. Follow-up conversations will then be conducted with a subset of candidates based on program needs.
Best wishes,
Michael Olin, Dean of Advising