Hugo Mentors Logo
Eliza
's mentorship /

Body Positivity

Taking Action Within One's Community

Mentee Profile

A private high school junior concerned about negative self-talk amongst her peers, Eliza performed a mixed methods study where she found an overwhelming number of her peers felt pressure to engage in unhealthy behaviors to change their bodies. She hoped to use her mentorship to correct the absence of education on body image issues within her high school's health curriculum and help change the student body's culture.

Mentee Goals

Learn about existing body image curricula and the evidence that supports them

Adapt a specific evidence-based curriculum to suit the needs of her school

Create a website focused on disseminating information about promoting body positivity in schools

Mentor Match

Eliza's mentor is a licensed clinical psychologist and research scientist within the University of Pennsylvania's Psychology Department, who specialized in issues of mental health in teenagers as well as the implementation of evidence-based practices for psychopathology in community settings.

Custom Curriculum

Skill Development

Developed strong grasp on empirical language, strengthened her critical thinking in adapting curricula to maximize its acceptability in the setting of her school, and learned to concisely present her findings in a clear way.

Program

To build out a body positive curriculum for her school, Eliza first reviewed a number of complex empirical articles from prestigious scientific journals, then evaluated an existing curriculum which she worked on adapting.

Final Project

Eliza's final project was comprised of three elements:

1. Body-positivity curriculum adapted for implementation in her school’s health class (including PowerPoint presentations and handouts).

2. Letter to school leadership proposing the use of this curriculum

3. Original educational site that shared her research and resources so other schools could implement body positive curricula: bodypositiveschools.org

MENTEE FEEDBACK

Students self-reported large gains in:

Research skills

Organizational skills

Technical skills

Appreciation for the value of your own contributions

Accomplishing a personal goal

Clarification of which academic areas interest her

Readiness for college level work

Increased academic self-confidence

Learning to work independently

Vist project website

OTHER Case studies

Original website sharing historical, political and economical information on the global refugee crisis with resources encouraging advocacy

Academic review paper of the science behind chronic traumatic encephalopathy covering animal models in CTE testing and CTE pathology, diagnosis and treatment

View all case studies

Projects

Hugo has run hundreds of mentorships across dozens of fields.  Each of them are unique and designed around the students background, goals and interests.  Below are some of the final projects students developed during their mentorships.

View projects