Chapman Student Founds Students Help Students Student Leader Maya Yesharim (BA '21 and MA '22) combines passions for teaching and community building by founding tutoring company.

Maya Yesharim (BA ’21 and MA ’22)

While studying at Chapman University, Maya Yesharim (BA ’21 and MA ’22) gained fieldwork experience and became passionate about building community in Orange County. While still an undergraduate student at Chapman, Maya founded a tutoring company called Students Help Students that combines her passions of teaching and giving back to the community.

Now in its second year, the company pairs college students with local K-12 children, and a portion of all company profits are donated to a local Orange County nonprofit organization, Higher Ground Youth and Family Services in Anaheim, California.

College Prep

In 2017, Maya Yesharim began her freshman year as an Integrated Educational Studies (IES) major in Chapman’s Attallah College of Educational Studies. She later declared a minor in Leadership Studies during her junior year. As an undergraduate student, Maya worked as a teacher’s assistant and for Chapman’s First Generation College Program.

During her senior year, Maya was accepted to Chapman’s accelerated Master of Arts in Leadership Development (MLD) program. She began taking master’s level courses during her senior year at Chapman. Currently, she is completing master’s level courses for her second year in the MLD program.

Students Help Students

Maya started Students Help Students because she has experience tutoring K-12 students. Additionally, during COVID and the resulting shift to remote instruction, many parents were reaching out to her and asking if she could tutor their children. Furthermore, college students from Chapman and other universities located in California were looking for work.

Most of the Students Help Students tutors are Chapman undergraduates or graduate students. The company pairs the college students with subject-matter expertise with K-12 students in Orange County based on the children’s needs.

During the beginning stages of the tutoring company, the tutors mainly worked with students over Zoom. In the past year, Students Help Students has tutored about 70 students.

When asked about what advice she would give to undergraduate students at Chapman, Maya said that college students should get to know their professors because almost every opportunity that she has had at Chapman was because of a connection with a professor.