PROPELS stands for “peers reaching out promoting educational learning success,” yes that is definitely a mouthful, but what does this really mean?

Fellow students volunteer to help out incoming students, no matter what background anyone comes from. PROPELS recognizes that EvCC has a wide range of student diversity; age, ethnicity, and religion are only a few.

According to Howell, the program launched in February 2014, this was nearly two years ago almost to the day. He started PROPELS when he “experienced the lack of student focus on what they wanted to do with their lives.” He strongly believes that mentoring is a good way to figure out what they want.

Another important component to PROPELS is recognizing the resources available to students. Howell recalls, “I saw that students did not really know what resources were available for their success.”

As the initiator of this still fairly new and growing program, Howell geared this program to helping students succeed in college.

“Most students that feel lost, end up either dropping out when times are touch or just stop going entirely,” Howell says as he explains that his goal is to “improve retention and student success, and mentoring to me is the best way to do that.”

In the past they have had about 15-30 student mentors and 15-20 students looking for support. This of course varies per quarter, right now the program has 23 mentors and 3 mentees.

Unfortunately, as Howell says, “students do not like asking for help until its too late.”

Remember these mentors are your peers, some have been here a little longer than others but we’ve all gone through similar experiences. If you don’t know anyone on campus this is a good way to get to know people and start blossoming the college experience.

PROPELS has biweekly meetings that gives all the mentors and mentees a chance to interact with each other because they believe that getting to know people and making friends is very vital to your college experience. “[They’ve] got your back,” literally, it’s their motto.