Stay in School UIC Networking Scavenger Hunt empowers citywide youth to build a network, envision college, and graduate high school January is National Mentorship Month, and over the weekend, Exelon brought 75 high school students from across the city to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) campus to visualize what college can be like. These students are participants in the Stay in School Program (SIS), and they come from neighborhoods including Austin, Humboldt Park/West Town, Bridgeport, Cicero, North Lawndale, Grand Crossing, and Evanston. Mentees included students like 17-year-old Semetrius Holmes from North Lawndale who says these opportunities have helped him develop interpersonal skills that have allowed him to connect and network with peers from across Chicago. Supported by their Exelon mentors, students spent the day building a network as they sought out UIC faculty and students, asked questions about campus resources, and navigated the college campus. Created in 2005, SIS is a collaboration between United Way, six social service agencies, several Chicago Public Schools, ComEd and Exelon employees. Since the program’s inception, SIS has helped 27,000 students graduate from high school in neighborhoods where dropout rates have been among the highest in Chicago. During the 2016-2017 school year, 92 percent of students ages 11 and up who participated in SIS were on track to graduate, with 95 percent of participating seniors eligible to graduate.