Clarke County Mentor Program honors doctoral student

A College of Education graduate student has been named Mentor of the Year at Clarke Middle School.

David Stanley, a second year doctoral candidate in the counseling psychology program, joined the Clarke County Mentor Program in the fall of 2015 as a way to help inspire and support youth in the community. While the volunteer work dovetails with his research interests, which includes studying the effects of parent-child relationships on academic achievement and motivation among African-American youth, he said for him, mentoring is about giving back.

"Being a black male in graduate school, I realize that we are few and far between at this level," he said. "One thing that really inspired me as a scholar was having positive black male mentors and role models as I was growing up in Jacksonville, Florida."

Hopefully, he added, his presence at the middle school will help inspire the next generation of leaders. "I wanted to use my influence to inspire up-and-coming scholars to reach their true potential while having the support of a black male mentor."

Stanley and other Clarke County School District mentors will be honored during the program's annual breakfast on Jan. 25 at Athens First United Methodist Church.