The Scholar's Mentorship Program (SMP) is a networking initiative for talented and high achieving general admission students of color. Beginning from the assumption that networking is a major key to success in the 21st Century, it was founded in 1988 by the members of the MRP Scholarship Committee--James Lee, Kate Hymes-Flanagan, George Roberts, Meredith Torres and Margaret Wade-Lewis. A year later, the Peer Mentorship Program founded by Gweneth Lloyd of the Psychological Counseling Center became part of the SMP.

The Scholar’s Mentorship Program (SMP) has grown from a networking initiative involving fifteen faculty/staff mentors and thirty-three first year protégés in the year of its founding (1988) to a multi-faceted program with fifty-six faculty/staff mentors and two-hundred and thirty protégés.  Over the past twenty years, it has regularly added new components.  The SMP is a major factor in the attraction of high achieving and talented general admission students of color to SUNY New Paltz, plays a major role in their performance and retention, and adds to the prestige of the college as a university that maintains excellence concurrently with cultural diversity.

Like the other networking programs--First Year Initiative (FYI) and Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs)--the Scholar's Mentorship Program provides a good start to a college career. In particular, it creates a network to facilitate an optimal educational experience for African/African American/ Caribbean, Asian/South Asian, Latino and Native American students.