Professor of Psychology

University of Massachusetts, Boston

Address:
100 Morrissey Blvd. Boston, Massachusetts 02467

Telephone: 617-287-6368

Email: jean.rhodes@umb.edu

Web: http://psych.umb.edu/faculty/rhodes/

Professor Rhodes has written extensively on the role of mentors in promoting positive developmental outcomes among children and adolescents. In addition to studying natural mentors, she and her colleagues have analyzed longitudinal data that were collected from over 1,000 urban adolescents who participated in a national study of Big Brothers Big Sisters. Her findings provide ample evidence of the extraordinary potential of mentoring relationships, while also exposing the rarely acknowledged risk for harm that unsuccessful relationships can render.

Rhodes is a member of the MacArthur Network on the Transition to Adulthood, and author of a monthly research column for the National Mentoring Partnership. Her book, Stand by Me: The risks and rewards of youth mentoring, was published by Harvard University Press in Spring 2002.