MentorPRO partners with National Guard Governors Summer ChalleNGe

MentorPRO, an evidence-based mentoring platform, has entered a partnership with the National Guard Governors Summer ChalleNGe program, an intensive summer residential experience that prepares young people with academic, leadership, and life-readiness skills. Through this partnership, the program is integrating MentorPRO to give cadets and their mentors a consistent way to stay connected, set goals, and sustain the gains of the summer experience long after cadets return home.

“The Governors Summer ChalleNGe team is doing extraordinary work in a compressed window of time, and the post-program period is where mentoring can really change a trajectory. We are honored to support their staff and mentors with a research-backed platform that brings structure and visibility to those critical months after a cadet goes home,” said Jean Rhodes, PhD, Co-founder of MentorPRO and Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring at UMass Boston.

The Governors Summer ChalleNGe builds on the broader National Guard Youth ChalleNGe model with a focused, summer-intensive format. Mentoring plays a central role in the program’s post-residential phase. MentorPRO supports that work by giving staff real-time visibility into mentor engagement, goal progress, and match health, and by providing mentors with tools and prompts grounded in decades of mentoring research. Cadets and mentors will receive timely, developmentally appropriate prompts that help them translate the summer experience into specific, measurable goals at home, school, and work.

This partnership joins MentorPRO’s growing collaboration with the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe community, which now spans multiple state academies. It reflects a shared commitment to ensuring that gains made during the residential experience translate into long-term academic, career, and well-being outcomes, supported by peer-reviewed research on structured, technology-supported mentoring. The Governors Summer ChalleNGe site will also contribute data and practice insights to a broader learning community across ChalleNGe programs.