The SAGE (Student Achievement Guided by Experience) Scholars Program enriches and empowers its students’ academic education by providing professional training and real-world experience. SAGE Scholars are low-income and high-achieving undergraduates who explore their professional options through guided research, paid internships, workshops, and SAGE sponsored networks.

Project Description:

The SAGE (Student Achievement Guided by Experience) Scholars Program enriches and empowers its students’ academic education by providing professional training and real-world experience. SAGE Scholars are low-income and high-achieving undergraduates who explore their professional options through guided research, paid internships, workshops, and SAGE sponsored networks. SAGE Scholars benefit from working with experts and leaders in their fields, developing life-long professional skills.

The UC Berkeley SAGE Scholars provides professional and career development research, mentoring and practical experience to our students by providing classes at the Haas School of Business given by experts. These classes are also supplemented by monthly workshops where students can interact with professionals. Due to the high risk of our students who all come from poverty, we work with a small group of 30 students a year. Once students are admitted into the Program, they stay in the program the entire time they are enrolled at UC Berkeley. We have 100% retention rate and all of our students go on to professional careers or the graduate school of their choice.

The SAGE Scholars Program is a very competitive program on the UC Berkeley campus. Students have to submit a written application and essay and finalists are invited to be interviewed by a panel of professionals along with the Executive Director.

In 2008 we lost significant support from financial institutions that provided financial support to our program, in addition to internships and scholarships to our students. We are looking for diverse corporate, individual and foundation partners that can support our work to further help us provide internships, scholarships and career and professional development to our high-achieving students of all majors. We currently work with more than 100 volunteers who are faculty, coaches and professional mentors.

UC Berkeley SAGE Program would like assistance from an HBS Community Partners team in positioning our organization to reach out to diverse constituencies to develop a sponsorship strategy.  This would include assessing the right partners for long term sustainability. Our goal for the coming year is to bring on several major constituents and sponsors who could partner with the UC Berkeley SAGE Scholars Program to provide financial support, internships and mentoring.

Our program is self-funded and supporting so we need to rebuild the corporate partnerships that we had in the past for the benefit of the sustainability of the program and its students. It’s also a valuable opportunity to build more partnerships so students can get mentors, internships, and jobs when they graduate.

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