Tipping Point - Role for Universities

Today I included the graphic below in this article showing how billionaires could fund programs at universities that build a pipeline of leaders and supporters who would help make volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs available in more places.

In the article I pointed to this blog, and the work interns have done for me over the past 20 years to help make sense of the ideas I was sharing in my newsletters, blog articles, visual essays, and videos. 

I also included a sample letter that a CEO might write to local philanthropists and university leaders, encouraging them to adopt the strategy.... and to fund it.  

Skim through articles on this blog and you'll find many examples of students "making sense" of the ideas I'm sharing.  Imagine a day in the future when you might find a collection like this on the website of a local university, business and/or foundation.

Make it happen!

Thanks for reading.  Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram and Mastodon and share my posts with your networks.  Share your own ideas of how to build systems of support that reach K-12 youth in every high poverty area of your community.

And, if you want to help me pay the bills, please visit this page and send a contribution. 

New work by IVMOOC team at Indiana University

In December 2025 a team of students from the Information Visualization (IVMOOC) class at Indiana University shared the project they had been working on for me since September 2025.  

I'm very impressed with the work they did. This visualization shows participation in one of the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences held in Chicago between May 1994 and May 2015. You can see it in this article.

In the article I show several other views that I created from the interactive Kumu project. However, this was only a demonstration of what's possible.  On social media I've been encouraging youth and volunteers from Chicago tutor/mentor programs to dig into the map and find their own organization, then share a screenshot showing what conferences you were part of.

To understand the value of this project, I urge you to read the IVMOOC team final report (click here).

Then take time to study the "Open Source Network Mapping" app created by the team. (click here).

Then look at the "How-To-Guide" that provides step by step information.

In the Project Overview the IVMOOC students wrote: "The NetworkMap is an event network visualization platform that helps event organizers collect participation and connection data, automatically convert it into network-ready nodes and edges, and explore insights through an analytics dashboard. Outputs can be exported to tools like Kumu.io and Gephi for deeper relationship mapping and network analysis." 

Then, look at the Git Hub page for the project. click here

On the home page you'll find this description. "NetworkMap - Event Network Visualization Platform. A full-stack web application for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing participant connections from events. Transform survey responses into interactive network graphs and analytics dashboards."

This is the third time that the IVMOOC project has looked at the Tutor/Mentor Connection (which has been led through Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011).  Click here to read the 2016 project report.

A second Fall 2025 IVMOOC team also looked at participation in the conferences. The map below was produced to show participation by year. 

Visit this article to see a description of the map and the analysis provided by the IVMOOC team.

This blog was started in 2006 by an intern from Hong Kong to show what he was learning and how he was helping. It's been used since then to introduce other interns and show their work.  It's part of an on-going invitation to engage students, faculty and alumni of universities in Chicago and throughout the world.

Read this post and find a PDF that shows 30 years of engagement, yet also shows no strategic, long-term effort where a stream of students work on the T/MC project while in college, then when they are alumni, with the goal of creating long-term impact on the lives of people living in high poverty areas. 

During 2026 I will be trying to share the open source resource created by the 2025 IVMOOC team as well as the analysis done by the second team.  I invite students and faculty to help me do that, by learning about the tool, and why it's important by reading articles on my blog and in my library.  Then, by creating your own event mapping project, perhaps showing how people at your university are connected around specific issues.

Please connect and introduce yourself to me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (see links here). 

Learn from work of interns

Over the past three months I've had my Tutor/Mentor website upgraded which led to reformatting of the site's look and feel.  One group of articles that were affected were those showing strategy visualizations and videos produced by interns between 2005 and 2015.   

I had to rebuild these pages, which I finished this week.  

Now you can find one page of visualizations at this link.

And you can find videos and more visualizations on this page.

If you browse through articles posted on this blog since Michael Tam, an intern from Hong Kong, started it in 2006, you'll see many of these presentations.

You'll also see presentations like this, where I've encouraged high schools, colleges and universities to create a Tutor/Mentor Connection study and action program on their own campus.

The interns who worked with me spent time reading my blog articles and looking through my website, then created their own interpretations, using various forms of visualization.  They were building new skills while learning new ideas. They were actively helping share ideas that could help more youth living in areas of persistent poverty get on-going tutor, mentor and learning support that would help them through high school, college and into adult lives and careers.  

Their articles focus on Chicago. The last were done in 2015, 10 years ago. That means there is a lot of new content that could be reviewed.  Any university in Chicago or any other place could have students doing this same work, and could soon have a page on their website showing student work, just as I do.

I wrote an article titled "Tipping Points: Growing and Supporting New Leaders" a few years ago. In it I showed how universities could be building a new wave of leaders who work directly in youth serving organizations while training others to become more proactive in supporting nonprofit and social benefit organizations from their roles in business, professions, policy makers, etc. 

It's the type of article student learners could review and reproduce in ways that might influence more people to actually adopt the ideas!  

That's the goal.

I can be found on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and Twitter (see links here).  I hope you'll connect with me.

If you appreciate what I share on my blogs and in the Tutor/Mentor library, please consider a contribution to help me pay the bills.  click here

Duplicate this work on university websites

For 10 years, between 2006 and 2015, interns from IIT in Chicago, and other universities, spent time learning about the work being done by Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present), then sharing their understanding through a variety of visualizations.

The cMap below shows some of the work interns did.

Archive of work done by Interns from 2006-2015

As you wander through this cMap you'll also want to read this article, where you can find an even fuller list of interns and work they have done.

While there was a consistent flow of interns, they were not coming as part of a strategic plan of the university, to reduce poverty in areas where the university was located, or to support a pipeline of students moving from Pre-K through high school, college, then into jobs and careers.

Thus, you won't find a page on any university website with a collection of articles and intern work similar to what you see on this blog. Or on-going efforts, described in the visualization below, to draw people from the university community and its alumni, along with it's surrounding community, into on-going conversations aimed at "How can we do this better?". 

It does not need to be this way.  Anyone can use this blog as an archive, and a museum, and a teaching tool.  The ideas are as useful today as they were when each project was first created.

The ideas apply to any area with high concentrations of poverty.  The process applies to building a better understanding of any complex problem and mobilizing more people to be involved in creating on-going, long-term solutions.

How to start? Create an independent study program where a few students begin to dig into my blogs to learn what I do and ways the ideas can be part of an on-going university-based strategy, funded by one or more wealthy alumni.

I'll help you.  If you want, students can join the Tutor/Mentor forum on Ning, and I can coach them, just as I did with past interns.  

Or, we can connect on ZOOM, or on BlueSky, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

Use AI to understand and share Tutor/Mentor ideas

Below is a graphic I've shared for over 25 years. It encourages people to read my newsletters, blog articles, PDF visual essays, etc., then create new media that shares their interpretations with their networks, so more people become strategically engaged in building and sustaining programs that reach K-12 youth in high poverty areas with support and learning opportunities that help them through school and into jobs and careers.

If you browse through articles posted on this blog since 2006 you'll see many examples of interns taking this role. I continue to encourage high schools and colleges to set up formal programs where students learn to do this as part of an active community-building effort, focused on the area surrounding the campus where they are located.

Last week a retired college professor from Western Kentucky demonstrated this.  The graphic below is from a blog article he posted. Included in the article was a podcast where two people discuss the material Terry was reviewing. 

In his article Terry introduced me to an artificial intelligence tool called Google Notebook LM.  The podcast has a man and a woman talking about the information being reviewed. They sound real.  In fact, I had to ask Terry if they were real. No.

I tested this over the weekend, asking it to look at some of my blog articles.  Yesterday I asked it to look at two article I'd written in past years about the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday.  

I posted the notes created by this review in this article on the Tutor/Mentor blog.  In it, I included a link to the podcast where that material is discussed.

The podcasts have some inaccuracies.  They often over-state what I've been doing and add in extra thoughts that were not part of the blog articles being reviewed, and were not part of any work I've been able to do.  

Yet, they demonstrate a long-term goal, that groups of people would look at the information I share and start discussions that create a better understanding, and support actions that build and sustain youth-serving programs in high poverty areas of Chicago and other places with concentrations of persistent poverty.

I encourage you to test this out. On the www.tutormentorexchange.net website are links to blogs, videos, PDF essays, past newsletters, etc. that I've created since 1993. 

They were seen by too few people. You can bring them to life and to more people and perhaps create the movement needed that changes what communities, businesses, philanthropy and government does to make high quality, mentor-rich programs available in more places.

Share what you create with me on one of these social media channels. 

I continue to depend on contributions from a small group of people to keep sharing these ideas. Visit this page and add your support if you're able. 

Thank you to interns and universities

This blog was created in 2006 by Michael Tam, an intern from Hong Kong.  It has been used since then to introduce work from many different interns.  I cannot thank them enough for their help.

A few weeks ago I created a presentation to show how I've reached out to universities for their support over the past 30 years.  You can view it in this post on the Tutor/Mentor blog and this post on the Mapping for Justice blog.

My goal is that people who look at the presentation, or skim through past articles on this blog, will see the potential of creating Tutor/Mentor Connection type programs on college campuses where students duplicate this work, but as part of a long-term commitment to reduce poverty and inequality in communities where each university is located.  

My last article on this blog was titled "Adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection".    

As the first page in the above presentation says, "It just takes two or three people on a campus to launch a Tutor/Mentor Connection."  They could be helped immensely if a wealthy alum were to make a bequest to support such a program for 10 to 20 consecutive years.  

That could be YOU, or someone you know. 

I've been posting archives of newsletters written since 1993, which you can see in this collection on the Tutor/Mentor blog.  They show that the problems of the 1990s are still with us 30 years later.

Until more people say, ENOUGH, and devote time, talent and dollars to long-term efforts that help kids in high poverty areas move through school and into jobs, and help reduce the structural racism and other barriers that make this journey more difficult for some kids than for others, the problem will persist.

I hope you'll be one of those people.

Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.  Find links on this page.

If you are able to make a contribution to help me pay the bills, please visit this page. 

Thank you for reading and sharing this article. 

Adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection

Over the past six months the monthly visit count on this blog has averaged over 8600. Prior to that visit count had usually been less than 500.  I'm not sure what is driving this growth, but I hope it is people from colleges and k-12 schools across America, and the world who are looking for on-line learning activities. 

Well, I've been sharing such an activity for more than 20 years. Maybe desperation will be the fuel for inspiration.

On-line learning

Below is an invitation I wrote in 2016.  As you read this (I hope) think of how students can work individually, or in teams, to learn what the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute has been trying to do since 1993. 

What am I talking about?
This blog was started in 2006 by Michael Tam, an intern from Hong Kong. Browse articles posted since then and meet all the different interns who have spent time at a computer, learning about the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, then sharing what they are learning through videos, animations, visualizations and/or blog articles. 

Follow the links in many articles to the group on the Tutor/Mentor Connection Ning site to see how I've coached interns since the late 2000s. 

Imagine your students doing this research and communications. Imagine a page on your web site sharing what they learn. Imagine you hosting ZOOM conversations where students and community members talk about what they are learning, like I did last week with students from Roosevelt  University.  Covid19 has highlighted the poverty and inequality in our country and in the world. 

Will we just talk about it, or will you create a student learning activity that creates current and future leaders, who map where the problem is, who is working to solve it, then creates on-going, student-generated, public education that draws more needed resources into each of these areas?

So here's what I wrote in 2016:

Here's a graphic that I created a few months ago in preparation for a meeting with some students and faculty at DePaul University in Chicago.

From top to bottom it illustrates a vision of creating youth serving organizations that help urban youth move more safely and successfully through school and into jobs and careers. It compares the planning to that involved in building tall sky-scrapers, where many talents are needed, much financing is needed, and where you work from the foundation to the top floor over a period of years.

The map in the middle illustrates that there are colleges and universities in different parts of Chicago (or other cities) who are full of student, faculty and alumni talent, and serve as anchor organizations able to support the growth of long-term tutor/mentor programs in the area surrounding their universities.

The last two graphics illustrate that while it takes daily effort by many people to build and sustain one, or many, youth serving organizations, this is just one issue that people are concerned with on a daily basis.,

Thus, part of the role of student teams on universities is to mobilize leaders who will focus their talent and resources on the youth development slide of the pie, while also connecting, sharing and drawing ideas from groups working on other problems, in other places.

Universities are critically important in this process because as we move through 2016 and into future years, there still is no body of knowledge that everyone draws from to build and sustain youth serving programs in high poverty areas that last for 10-30 years and show on their web sites the impact they have had over that many years.  Imagine if there were no thousand-year history supporting architecture, engineering and the building trades, but that anyone who wanted to build a building, first had to figure out what talent was needed, and then had to build training programs so the talent had the skills needed to build the building. Imagine them doing this while also trying to find the funding needed to develop the talent, and spread it to all the places where tutor/mentor "buildings" were needed.

I've created a huge library of ideas and information, with links to over 2000 other web sites, who each link to many thousand of additional web sites.  Working through this information will take years of study. Universities could make this a degree-earning process and provide manpower to support organization growth at the same time. Below is a presentation that outlines my goal. If you're connected to a university, or looking to put your name on a building at your alma mater, I hope you'll make this your mission.

Forming a College-Based Tutor/Mentor Connection by Daniel F. Bassill

I've written more than 1000 articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog since 2005, and tagged most of them so you can view multiple articles focused on a similar idea.  

--- end 2016 article ---

universities in Chicago

At the right is a map of Chicago, showing poverty areas, and university locations, created in 2008 by Mike Traken, who worked at the T/MC for 3 years (until the money ran out).  My goal since starting the T/MC in 1993 was that universities in every part of the city would have T/MC strategies, focusing on the area surrounding their university.  See Mike's map & article here.

Furthermore, my vision was that these universities would actually connect and share ideas and what they were learning, so each could have a growing impact on helping end poverty in the region.  

I've posted 78 articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog since 2005, focusing on universities and roles they might take.  On this wiki page I outline my vision for university partnerships.  Since every big city in the world has pockets of concentrated poverty, and universities, my invitation extends to the world. 

It's 2022 and that's still my hope.

Enjoy your reading. I'll look forward to hearing from you.

PS:  I talked with Michael Tam on Facebook in 2020. He's living in Hong Kong and serves as a curriculum development officer in the education bureau of the government. This is an example of the long-term connections I seek to foster.