Resources

Team Leader Mentoring Program

After recently admitted scholars complete the summer portion of this program, they are assigned to a team leader, a paid employee of the State of Maryland, who is an upperclass undergraduate student at the University with a similar major. This team leader is a mentor, and the scholar is the mentee. The mentor bears the responsibility of ensuring his mentee is on track with his road map to success and individual action plan. The mentors communicate with the mentees weekly, and they track and record their mentee’s progress and performance by continually checking the mentee’s Weekly Academic Honor Form. The mentor advises the mentee on career goals, academic classes, and personal issues to ensure the mentee is focused and always aware of what he needs to do next in order to succeed.

Big Brother Mentoring Program

CSS Class

The Big Brother program was created to complement one of CSS’ primary missions, which soon became its tagline: A community of scholars. A brotherhood for life. A big brother is an upperclass scholar who has the opportunity and responsibility to empower, develop, grow, and shape the freshman little brother. The big brother program gives scholars another opportunity to connect with upperclassmen in addition to their team leaders. Unlike the team leaders, the big brothers do not have administrative duties, but rather are encouraged to connect with their littles in a more informal manner. Together, bigs and littles attend study sessions, social activities hosted by the CSS program, Saturday morning tutoring for high school students from underprivileged communities, and other events.

One-on-One Tutoring

Scholars are more likely to understand class material and excel on examinations when they receive individual tutoring. We offer our scholars the best tutors in every field of study at no charge. These are tutors who have already taken classes that scholars may be struggling with, and can easily target difficult parts of the curriculum. If we do not have a tutor in a field which a scholar is struggling in, then we do not stop looking until we hire a new tutor to meet the needs of that scholar.

Review and Study Sessions

Older CSS brothers hold review and study sessions. Although we strongly encourage one-on-one tutoring for all our scholars, we still recognize and value the usefulness of review and study sessions led by the scholars themselves. Our scholars have access to a semester-long schedule of weekly review and study sessions. Scholars go over problem sets, homework, quizzes, and exams together so that they can learn from each other and help each other succeed.

Private Study Room and Resources

Each scholar has his own place outside of his residence and classrooms to go where he feels welcomed and surrounded by his brothers. CSS has our own room in the Marie Mount Hall with couches, desks, chairs, computers, printers, refrigerator, microwave, white boards, and more. Only CSS scholars are allowed in the room. A CSS employee staffs the room to answer questions, maintain a safe study environment, and inform scholars about CSS events. Our scholars come here to study, relax, take a break between classes, and catch up on work. Outside of study hours, we also use this room as a place for our scholars to socialize. We host birthday celebrations, game nights, sports nights, workshops, and other events here.