RGV Mentors and Protégés Pictured with Rene Capistran (last on top row), Tech Prep Executive Board and President - South Texas Region, SpawGlass Contractors; and Laura Lara, AIA (fourth on top row), Architect and Senior Project Manager, UT System RGV Office of Facilities Planning and Construction

RGV Mentors: Networking Time

RGV Mentors and Tech Prep have partnered to establish the Mentor Protégé pilot program to assist high school students in their career and college decisions. The school-based mentoring began with the Spring 2011 semester and twice-monthly sessions that paired a college student-mentor with a Harlingen High School student-protégé.

Mentors provide a link to the next step in life, a link to the real world of college or career. Successful people, including the founders of RGV Mentors, credit mentors with supporting and guiding them on their paths to their goals. RGV Mentors college students and working professionals are likewise guiding the high school students to a college- and career-ready outlook.

Alternating sessions introduce guest speakers who address topics about achieving success and are followed by a mentor-protégé project, which builds on the speakers’ topic.

“Want a good career?” speaker Rene Capistran asked the protégés at the first working session of RGV Mentors.  “Identify your passion. To be successful you must love what you do and who you do it for,” said the South Texas president of SpawGlass.  “Don’t ever pursue a career solely to make a lot of money.” He told the students how he tried out various jobs before he got into construction and finally knew he had found the right arena for his interests and talents.

“Don’t be afraid to ask professionals to mentor you,” said Beatriz Flores, a student in UTB’s architecture program.  She wasn’t, and it has made a big difference in her life and future.   Beatriz had helped her father in the construction business and loved wielding a hammer or a drill since childhood.  She discovered that architecture offered what she wanted in her future:  construction, competition, personal interactions.  Flores met Laura Lara, architect and Senior Project Manager of the UT System in the Rio Grande Valley, and asked the petite professional to be her mentor.
 
Lara said she has been delighted to be able to steer Flores in the right direction and help her avoid missteps on her academic quest for a career in architecture. Lara, in fact, echoed Capistran:  “Find something you will enjoy for the rest of your life, no matter what it is.  Pursue it, and the world is yours.”

Beatriz talked to the protégés about college life. “I recommend you visit other campuses. There is a big difference between college and high school.” Group assignments are common and present some problems. “You will be faced with classmates who don’t do their share of the work,” she explained. Don’t let others set your standards was her advice.  Do your best no matter what the rest do.