The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's therapy program, "SMARTT," seeks to integrate juvenile offenders ages 12 and 13 back into the local community. The program will bring mentors from the university and local high schools to the institutions and homes housing juvenile offenders. College students participating in SMARTT will take a 3 credit interdisciplinary course offered through the Psychology department and the Schools of Public Health and Social Work for one year. This course will give students the opportunity to analyze, dissect, and discuss the psychological and biochemical causes of the disruptive disorders that contribute to juvenile delinquency in addition to the social and economic factors that directly contribute to juvenile delinquency. In addition to this, students will consider, critique and evaluate current methods of treating disruptive disorders. Students taking this course will then commit to volunteering 10-15 hours of their time each week during the second semester of the class mentoring and counseling one juvenile offender through SMARTT. These students have the option of staying on in the program and taking on more administrative roles. After an application period that involves local high schools and community partners, the students will hold workshops to begin to train high school students. Each high school student will then be paired with and shadow one college student taking the service-learning class; after one semester of shadowing, high school students will be able to begin mentoring through SMARTT.

	Updates
Project Home No Updates Posted