View photos and videos from recent SLI events.
Featured: Watch a video of mentee Oswaldo Contreras featured on the NBC Nightly News
Support the SLI program and provide scholarships for program graduates.
You can help SLI as a UNC student, professor, or community member.
Learn about becoming a mentor or how to support our mission in other ways.
We are located in three North Carolina counties and have a main office in the Global Education Center on the UNC campus.
Click link for more information.
Feel free to contact our program coordinator Katherine Stalberg at 919.843.5286.
You can send an email with questions or comments by clicking the link to the left.
The SLI program consists of:
- One-on-one, sustained three-year mentoring with a university student
- Opportunities for sustained public service
- Completion of an early college academic experience, taught by a university professor
- College-preparatory skills training
- Cultural enrichment experiences
Our former students have attended:
- Amherst College
- Appalachian State University
- Guilford College
- UNC Charlotte
- MIT
- Harvard University
- The University of Richmond
- Roanoake College
- Meredith College
- North Carolina A&T
- UNC Chapel Hill
- UNC Greensboro
- California State Long Beach
- University of Richmond
Each fall, motivated, high-achieving sophomore students from three North Carolina high schools apply to form part of the new class of SLI scholars. Every student is matched with a sophomore mentor from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The mentor-mentee relationship enables long-term support, guidance, and friendship that evolve as both the high school and college students advance in their academic careers.
SLI students, typically first-generation college students, are academically gifted but come from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. SLI provides its students with resources that may otherwise have been unavailable or difficult to access, helping them to graduate from high school and enter college. SLI invests in these students to reward their drive and success and with the hope that they will realize their potential to make future contributions to their communities.
All of our scholars who have completed the three-year program have been accepted to college, and many have been offered merit and athletic scholarships. We believe that the relationship between dedicated scholars and mentors has opened doors to students, enabling them to continue overcoming the odds.
