JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 34, No. 6, 647–655 (2006) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.20121 INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE: YOUTH MENTORING: BRIDGING SCIENCE WITH PRACTICE David L. DuBois University of Illinois at Chicago Jean E. Rhodes University of Massachusetts, Boston Initiatives to promote mentoring relationships in the lives of young people have become immensely popular in recent years. Programs with this aim now number well into the thousands and benefit from significant levels of governmental, corporate, and philanthropic support. The research base that is necessary to inform the practice of mentoring, by comparison, has lagged behind. To address the field’s need for a stronger scientific foundation, MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership convened the National Research Summit on Mentoring in 2003. A policy brief that resulted from the summit identified several priority areas for future research on youth mentoring, as well as strategic mechanisms to support this work. This special issue features reports from working groups at the summit that were organized around the following themes: evaluation and research methodology, relationships, programs, contexts, special populations, developmental and cultural perspectives, and community organizing and advocacy. Collectively, the reports highlight the need for research to clarify a wide range of important theoretical and pragmatic issues in efforts to promote effective mentoring of youth. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Initiatives to promote mentoring relationships in the lives of young people have become immensely popular in recent years. Programs with this aim now number well into the thou- sands and benefit from significant levels of governmental, corporate, and philanthropic INTRODUCTION The authors gratefully acknowledge the leadership of MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership in organiz- ing and convening the National Research Summit on Mentoring that is described in this article, as well as the funding received from the Kauffman Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood. Correspondence to: David L. DuBois, Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1747 W. Roosevelt Rd., Chicago, IL 60608. E-mail: dldubois@uic.edu