Warriors in the Community is a radio segment that features short, insightful interviews with key figures from Wayne State University about the many ways in which the university and its programs make a positive impact on the metro area and on the lives of Detroiters.
In this episode, we talk with Lauren Scott, Diversity & Inclusion Manager at Wayne State’s Mike Ilitch School of Business, about MISB’s Multicultural Professional Readiness Education Program (MPREP), a learning community designed to encourage, support, develop and retain multicultural, undergraduate business students from enrollment to commencement. MPREP aspires to increase the number of its scholars by creating a unifying collaboration between Ilitch School academic resources, corporate supporters/mentorship and community engagement.
Transcript
Intro: This is “Warriors in the Community” brought to you by Wayne State University, and now to learn about how Wayne State is positively impacting our community, here is Darrell Dawsey.
Darrell Dawsey: Hi, this is Darrell Dawsey, and today I'm with Lauren Scott, Ph.D., the Diversity and Inclusion Program Manager at the Mike Ilitch School of Business, as well as the director of the Multicultural Professional Readiness Education Program (MPREP), a learning community, also in the Mike Ilitch School of Business, and she's here to talk to us today about MPREP.
Tell us a little bit about what MPREP is and why it was conceived.
Lauren Scott: The purpose was to create a program that will help increase the representation of minority students in accounting and finance, and ultimately within various business industries, and also increase representation within the business school and our six majors.
Darrell Dawsey: Tell us how the program works and how it benefits students.
Lauren Scott: So we have four main pillars for our students; the first one is mentorship. A lot of them are coming to school into our program kind of blind. They don't quite know what they can do with their degree, so we provide mentors to them that match their identities and they stay with that mentor until they graduate.
The other piece is industry exposure and access. Our students are welcome to weekly presentations by companies and community partners who are actively looking for them. The other one is academic accountability. At the end of the day, we want these students to graduate. We want them to be able to come out with a degree to be able to change their social mobility and the mobility of their family.
If they are having issues with their gpa, they are not removed from the program, but we help, we step in.
Darrell Dawsey: Tell us a little bit about how the program benefits the business kid.
Lauren Scott: We are, you know the, the Business School of Detroit, the Ilitch School of Business is right there in the heart of it. Our students are amazing.
You know, when they apply for internships in these full-time positions, they go in there with the work ethic that I've, you know, been told is unheard of. They know that they have us right in their backyard.
Darrell Dawsey: Thank you so much for joining us today.
Lauren Scott: Thank you.
Extro: This has been “Warriors in the Community.” For more Wayne State News, please visit us online at today.wayne.edu/wwj and join us here next Monday at the same time for more warriors in the community.