About
MISSION AND PURPOSE
The mission of the Latino Aggie Mentorship Program is to create a positive environment that will foster a sense of belonging by serving as a place to engage and create meaningful lasting friendships with other people from similar backgrounds as they navigate the uncharted field of college and mentorship journey.
The purpose will be to guide and mentor fellow Aggies and underrepresented students within the community. The organization will do this by offering mentorship/tutoring, interdisciplinary field exposure (through shadowing), volunteering opportunities, internships, and much more.
A Message From Our Founder
Efrain Amaro
Howdy!
Welcome to the Latino Aggie Mentorship Program!
The Latino Aggie Mentorship Program (LAMP) was designed with the core mission of providing mentorship to the Texas A&M student body and local community.
In the Fall of 2019 I was working as an Academic Tutor for The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. During the time working there, I met many outstanding students, and my life was impacted by a lot of them. Particularly, I met a student who came seeking tutoring in Biology, and throughout our sessions our shared passion for medicine came up. I quickly introduced him to the Joint Admission Medical Program (JAMP). After sharing this information with other students, it became evident that JAMP and other similar early assurance medical school programs were not in the current knowledge of the students’ whom these program are seeking to help. It is at this moment that I had the idea to establish an effort to overcome these challenges and help fellow first-generation and/or low-SES classmates.
In May of 2021, I joined the Latino Medical Student Association Pre-Medical Latino Undergraduate Society (LMSA PLUS) as the Mentorship Director. It is here where LAMP began its story with Texas A&M. After launching, we fortunately had a lot of success, and the program grew beyond my expectations. As a result, Fall of 2021 I founded LAMP as its own independent organization to better meet the needs of the students’ and community. I recruited the inaugurating team, Melody Ramirez (Vice-President), Arcadio Salinas (Director of Operations), Trevor Balderrama (Program Manager), Nadia Lara (Outreach Coordinator), Michael Davis (Public Relations Chair), and Ana Viera (Secretary). We were fortunate to have Dr. Marcia Montague join us as the faculty advisor for LAMP! Their help was instrumental to the successful establishment of LAMP and its continued success.
Through the hard work and dedication of our faculty advisor and the leadership team, we were able to successfully recruit over 80 students for our mentorship program and form a collaboration with Heart of Texas GEAR UP to serve the community!
The success of LAMP reflects the hard work of our mentors/mentees who make the program possible!
Thank you for joining us, I hope LAMP meets and exceeds your expectations and I wish nothing but the best in your academic endeavors!
Sincerely,
Efrain Amaro
Founder
Molecular and Cell Biology 22’