Mentorship Experiences
Katie Krukenberg
Mrs. Krukenberg was my faculty mentor. Mrs. Krukenberg is a social work professor at the University of Mary. Before this, she worked at Home on the Range, Charles Hall Youth Services, and Bismarck Public schools as a social worker. While she was mentoring me, I was able to go speak at a career fair with her and then go tour Home on the Range. I have learned so much from Mrs. Krukenberg both in my classes and in talking and working with her as a mentee. Mrs. Krukenberg is very good a connecting with people and through her actions, she is able to show how to connect better with people and why this is important. She goes above and beyond to connect with her students. Mrs. Krukenberg is a very strong leader and this is shown through her initiative to lead. She is in charge of many different things in the social work program including junior field placements and many classes. She also is taking on some of the criminal justice classes as well. I am so glad that I have been able to work with Mrs. Krukenberg and I believe that I have learned so much from her.
Jess Friesz
I was able to work with Jess Friesz as my professional mentor. Jess works at the Youth Correctional Center as the Director of Treatment. Jess started at YCC out of college and has worked his way up to working in treatment. While working with him, I was able to talk a lot about the shift the juvenile court has gone to from incarceration to rehabilitation. He has been able to see the shift in the time that he has been working in juvenile court and he was able to talk to me a lot about the positive things that have come from this shift along with some of the negative. I was also able to talk to one of the senior interns at YCC. She talked to me about what the job is like and what she likes about it. She talked to me about how she has been able to make connections with the students and can see a difference in how they interact with her. I had the opportunity to sit in on a interdisciplinary meeting with Jess. In this meeting, each case manager came in and talked to a representative from the school, drug counseling, counseling, and Jess about how things are going with the juvenile and what they can do better to help. I really enjoyed sitting in on this meeting because I could see that they really care about each individual kid. Things tend to be on a case by case basis and what is best for the student. The team was also able to think critically about what they were doing and how they could make things better. I am really glad that I was able to have Jess as a mentor. I think that I learned a lot from him and I am more excited to go out into the workforce after this experience.