SquashSmarts high school senior and 7-year veteran Amber Thomas puts in extra time on her studies. Each SquashSmarts student is paired with an individual mentor, either a college student or local volunteer, who serves as a consistent source of guidance. Students also are assigned additional academic work in twice-weekly sessions and are given time to complete their regular homework assignments. SquashSmarts coaches provide a structured squash and fitness training program for all students, regardless of their athletic experience. The program also emphasizes community service; for example, students volunteer at a local soup kitchen on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Now with support from the Eckerd Family Foundation, Drexel psychology researchers are developing a model to measure the effectiveness of SquashSmarts for at-risk youth. The goal is to answer the questions: What methods work best with which kids? How often does a student need to participate and in what context? (L-R) Sakora Miller, Amber Thomas, Jasmin Wingate, Tempest Bowden and Rachel Edmonds enjoy their 2nd place finish at the National Urban Squash & Education Team Championships in Boston. Through lengthy one-on-one meetings, psychology doctoral students will monitor students’ progress and will measure academic achievement skills, academic engagement, self-esteem, social competence, and the quality of students’ relationships with adults and peers. “We are ultimately studying how participating in SquashSmarts is changing these children’s development,” says Heather Green, the research team’s group leader. In the meantime, SquashSmarts is thriving – it recently expanded to a new facility, the Lenfest Center, in northern Philadelphia. As the program grows, Heilbrun and his students expect their evaluation model to be valuable not only for SquashSmarts but also for other programs unable to develop their own evaluations. “The evaluation will ultimately answer the questions that need to be asked to see if the program is working,” says Heilbrun. And that will help ensure that SquashSmarts and other athletic-academic programs help youth reach their full potential. [back to topics]