Program Design
Dr. Afia Ofori-Mensa is an accomplished educator with over a decade of high-level administrative experience in undergraduate program design and development. She specializes in designing undergraduate research and professional development programs. Her expertise centers on creating cohort experiences for first-generation college students, low-income students, and students of color. Her approach supports students in building the experiences and networks that will help them to improve their academic performance and align their future careers with their most deeply held values. In all of her work, she is oriented toward cultivating communities of care and advocating for institutional change, to the benefit of students from groups that are historically and presently underserved by highly selective colleges and universities in the United States.
Below are descriptions of two major, longstanding cohort programs that Dr. Ofori-Mensa created for institutions of higher education. For a sampling of curricular elements that she has designed for those programs, you can view her list of workshop offerings.
Photo Credit | Matthew Raspanti
ASAP
Aspiring Scholars and Professionals
Princeton University
Dr. Afia Ofori-Mensa is the founding director of the Aspiring Scholars and Professionals (ASAP) program at Princeton University. Established in 2021 in the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access & Opportunity, ASAP is a cohort internship program that pairs non-Princeton New Jersey undergraduates with Princeton faculty and staff members for undergraduate research or professional experiences in the humanities, qualitative social sciences, communications and education. The program aims to introduce students — especially first-generation college students, low-income students, formerly incarcerated students, community college students, and military veterans — to higher education careers in those areas. Students in ASAP participate in an eight-week summer institute focused on professional development and research methods workshops, alongside an internship practicum, wherein they have the opportunity to apply immediately the skills they are learning in the program. Following the summer institute, ASAP interns have the opportunity to continue their practicum at Princeton through a full academic year. In this way, Dr. Ofori-Mensa designed ASAP to sustain the benefits of a cohort experience beyond the traditional single-summer internship.
ASAP in the News
Photo Credit | Diana Tebo
STRONG
Science and Technology Research Opportunities for a New Generation
Oberlin College
Dr. Afia Ofori-Mensa founded the Science and Technology Research Opportunities for a New Generation (STRONG) program at Oberlin College in 2015. The STRONG program began as a residential, pre-matriculation, cohort program for first-generation college students, low-income students, and students of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The original STRONG program centered on faculty-mentored summer experiences in which STRONG Scholars made meaningful contributions to research groups in Oberlin’s STEM departments. In its first five cohorts, the STRONG program solidified students’ identification as scientists, resulting in earlier declaration of STEM majors and a substantially higher persistence rate in those majors as compared to comparable populations at Oberlin. The program will celebrate its tenth year at Oberlin College in 2025.
STRONG in the News
