The STARS Program At Loyola University Chicago

by Kalliope Bessler

Loyola University Chicago is known for their basketball team’s impressive rise to the Final Four in the NCAA’s 2018 March Madness tournament and the gentle Jesuit Catholic nun, Sister Jean, that is their most vocal supporter.

However, there are countless impressive student-led initiatives on Loyola’s campus that have risen up over the past several years that deserve the spotlight. Where Loyola’s students see fellow students in need, they work to provide the resources. One example of the work done by Loyola’s students to provide for each other, is in the Students Together Are Reaching Success (STARS) program in the Loyola office for Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs.

The STARS program was created to support first-year students of color and first generation students. The transition to college can be challenging for any student, but especially for students that are first-generation (the first person in their family to attend college) and for students that identify as people of color. STARS is a student mentorship program for these first-year students. Students that are sophomores, juniors, or seniors that identify as first-generation and/or as people of color, mentor first-year students that identify the same way.

Loyola University juniors Jaia Goan and Imani Melendez were both mentees in the program during their first year and both have continued to participate. Jaia just completed a year as a mentor and will be an intern for the program in the fall. Imani is entering her first year as a mentor in the program.

The goals of the program are to support the first-year students in their transition to college and empower them in an institution where they may be underrepresented or at a lack of resources.

“They gave us all the resources we needed and we did the rest,” Jaia Goan said.

STARS mentors hold gatherings and interactive programs that are focused on having fun, learning, and dialoging with one another. Jaia explained the purpose of some of the topic choices, saying, “one of the topics we like to talk about, because a lot of POC/first-generation students experience it, is impostor syndrome.” 

The information and empowerment provided by the STARS program has had an impact on Imani Melendez that reaches far beyond the STARS community. She said that for many students, your first year of college is about “coming into your identities. I’ve been able to use what I’ve learned in STARS to show other People of Color that it’s okay to be a strong POC.”

Jaia said that she chose to participate in the STARS program her first year at Loyola because she was searching for a community. STARS also gave her the opportunity to have conversations about race and culture. Jaia said, “as someone who grew up in Tennessee, race has always been a touchy subject unless we were in a space where we knew everyone is Filipinx.”  

Even after their first year and their mentorship ends, the connections remain. Imani said, “even as an alum [of the program], I was still part of the community.”

When asked what might be next for the STARS program, both women expressed interest in expanding the scope of the program so that some activities are open to the larger Loyola community. Jaia said, “if we want the Loyola University Chicago community to be more knowledgeable, we need to open some of those spaces up.”