Questions Below Include:
Qs About Signing-in and Signing-up
Qs About My Profile
Qs About the Circle Chat Forum
Qs About Viewing My Circle
Qs About Updating My Champions
Qs About Nominating Champions
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The information you will be sharing with your Coach and Champions may at times be private information. We need to make sure this information is kept confidential, and the only way to do this is to have your personal information and communications with your Circle transpire in a secure environment. Once you are logged in, you can stay logged in to make accessing your Circle of Champions as easy as possible.
The process usually takes students less than 5 minutes to register.
No. Students can register and participate in the Circle of Champions Network at no cost. This program is free to students and Champions.
Reach out to your coach (www.mycircleofchampions.com/mycoach) or find other resources for student help at www.mycircleofchampions.com/help.
You can use the tools to create a new password at the the login/sign-in page, reach out to your coach, or find other resources for student help at www.mycircleofchampions/help.
Qs About Signing-in or Signing-up
Building and maintaining your profile information is important because it is the most concise summary of where you are in your academic journey. This is where your Champions can go to see how you are doing and offer specific support in relation to your journey. It is also a space where you can reflect on your academic journey, document where you are, where you are headed, what you need to do, and more.
Students typically take about 15 or 20 minutes to initially fill in their profile information. On a regular basis, we will ask you to update bits and pieces of your profile. These reminders typically take students about five minutes or less to update. You can also go to your profile at any time and spend as much time as you would like making sure all the information is accurate.
Yes! We keep all of your information securely stored behind your username and password. The only people who have access to the information are you, your Champions, your Coach, the executive personnel charged with maintaining the website/application.
Reach out to your coach (www.mycircleofchampions.com/mycoach) or find other resources for student help at www.mycircleofchampions.com/help.
Qs About My Profile
To add more Champions to your Circle, login through myCircleofChampions.com, go to the Champion nomination tool, and nominate as many people as you like to join your Circle.
The chat/messaging tool makes it easy to see all individuals in your Circle and see what comments they are making. This is also an important tool because it allows us to track/record all communications. This helps us make the Circle of Champions Network available for free to all students and Champions.
Reach out to your student's coach (www.mycircleofchampions.com/mycoach) or find other resources for student help at https://www.mycircleofchampions.com/champion-help.
Qs About The Circle Chat
We refer to a Circle of Champions as a Circle or your Circle. The Circle includes all the Champions who are supporting your academic journey. It may take a little while (a few months?) to build your Circle. You may add people to your Circle over time as key individuals come in and out of your life. Regardless, this is a group of people who will celebrate with you when you achieve important accomplishments, support you when you struggle with challenging hurdles, and help you when you are making important decisions.
If you are a first-generation college student, it is particularly important to build a Circle of Champions. First-gen students come from communities with friends and family who love them, but often lack college experience and know-how. As a result, these students receive less guidance in their academic journeys. Surrounded by people who want to help but don’t know how, they are less likely to receive support when applying for college, choosing courses, securing financial aid, planning for careers, and generally navigating the complexities of college. In addition, the under-funded condition of the public colleges they most often attend means college personnel are not typically able to fill these support gaps leaving an estimated 45% of college students (and more for marginalized students) to never see an academic advisor (Flaherty, 2023).
The result is first-gen undergraduates navigate complicated academic journeys largely by themselves. This condition contributes to an academic equity gap for students from historically underserved communities. While we can celebrate the achievement of proportionate college access for most student groups (Mora, 2022), success
and completion rates remain disproportionately low for students of color and low income students from all race and ethnicity groups.
An engaged Circle of Champions has been proven to help first-gen students find greater academic success.
This feature allows you to see all the Champions in your Circle. You can view their individual profile information and reach out to them via email or chat. You can also communicate with the entire Circle easily from this view.
At a minimum, you should aim for 4 Champions to be in your Circle. We recommend that you do not exceed 10 Champions. You will likely need to nominate more that 4 to reach your minimum.
This varies quite a bit from student to student. Some students are able to identify nominees very quickly, extend invitations, and fill their Circle in a matter of weeks. Other students come from small families, no families, or families with strained relationships and spend several months or longer going through the process of building their Circle. If you are struggling to find four individuals to join your Circle, reach out to your coach (www.mycircleofchampions.com/mycoach) for help.
Reach out to your coach (www.mycircleofchampions.com/mycoach) or find other resources for student help at www.mycircleofchampions.com/help.
Qs About Viewing My Circle
Many of your Champions are pretty busy. An update from you on your academic journey will help keep them informed and help them take relevant steps toward supporting your journey.
This is a very cool tool that makes writing and sending your update very easy. Once you open the tool, you will have a text-style or DM-style conversation with Sylvia or Mateo (your virtual guide). They will ask you a series of questions and you can provide simple answers in a conversational format. From there they will generate a recommended update. You can ask for changes to the message language. Once you are happy with the update, ask Sylvia/Mateo to send it to your Champions and they will take care of it. That's it! All your Champions will receive a personal message from you.
Yes. You can manually send out an update by initiating a chat with your Champions at www.mycircleofchampions.com/chatwithmychampions. If you are going to send out an update manually (without Sylvia's or Mateo's assistance), we recommend you include the following topics in your update message:
Discuss a challenge or two you have had over the last month or so.
Discuss an accomplishment or two you have had over the last month or so.
Discuss what you see as the biggest hurdle or hurdles coming in the next month or so.
Ask your Champions a question at the end that is related to your update and will get a response. For example, ask them if they have had a challenge similar to yours, and what they did to address it.
Reach out to your coach (www.mycircleofchampions.com/mycoach) or find other resources for student help at www.mycircleofchampions.com/help.
Qs About Sending Updates to My Champions
If you are a first-generation college student, it is particularly important to build a Circle of Champions. First-gen students come from communities with friends and family who love them, but often lack college experience and know-how. As a result, these students receive less guidance in their academic journeys. Surrounded by people who want to help but don’t know how, they are less likely to receive support when applying for college, choosing courses, securing financial aid, planning for careers, and generally navigating the complexities of college. In addition, the under-funded condition of the public colleges they most often attend means college personnel are not typically able to fill these support gaps leaving an estimated 45% of college students (and more for marginalized students) to never see an academic advisor (Flaherty, 2023).
The result is first-gen undergraduates navigate complicated academic journeys largely by themselves. This condition contributes to an academic equity gap for students from historically underserved communities. While we can celebrate the achievement of proportionate college access for most student groups (Mora, 2022), success and completion rates remain disproportionately low for students of color and low income students from all race and ethnicity groups.
An engaged Circle of Champions has been proven to help first-gen students find greater academic success.
It is a pretty simple process for students. Once you have decided who you will nominate, login/sign-in to your account through myCircleofChampions.com. Go to the "Nominate a Champion" tool, fill in the nomination form for each individual and hit send. An invitation from you containing all the information a nominees needs to join your Circle is sent automatically.
It could take a while to think about who you want to nominate. Some students spend a few days thinking about this off and on. It is important you select the right people. Once you have the nominees identified and have their contact information, it take less than a minute to actually nominate them.
Students typically nominate family members, friends, former high school teachers, professors, and similar individuals to join their Circle. It is up to you. The diagram below may give you some ideas.
The primary role of a Champion is to keep up on you academic journey and support you through the journey. Some will do this at the emotional level, providing support and encouragement. Others in your Circle may have more detailed college process knowledge and can help from that perspective. One may even have professional mentoring expertise and can help with the job seeking end of your journey. Regardless, the primary role of a Champion is to help you move forward on your journey however they can.
An overview of their role can be found at https://www.mycircleofchampions.com/being-a-champion.
There are no required expenses or fees to be a Champion. The program is free to Champions.
First, it is important that you do not take this as a big personal rejection. Some people are going to say "no." They may be going through something in their private lives and don't have time for the commitment. They may have been asked already by a few other students. We won't ask them to explain why. We just accept their "no" and move on. Remember that successful people encounter "no" all the time. The key is to keep moving forward looking for the "yes".
Nominees who agree to become Champions will be provided with specific instructions (and help) to go through the registration/sign-up process. Basically, they will need to register and fill out a very brief profile. There are significant orientation materials provided to Champions at www.myCircleofChampions.com.
At a minimum, you should aim for 3 Champions to be in your Circle. We recommend that you do not exceed 10 Champions. You will likely need to nominate 4 or 5 to reach your minimum.
Reach out to your coach (www.mycircleofchampions.com/mycoach) or find other resources for student help at www.mycircleofchampions.com/help.
Qs About Nominating Champions