The Mills Community Tennis Program (MCTP) is a comprehensive community outreach initiative founded by Marc Weinstein, Mills College’s head tennis coach, and by the Mills College Women’s Tennis Team. The program’s mission is to expand opportunities for inner-city youth through tennis coaching, academic tutoring, and mentoring. Mills College tennis team members assist Coach Weinstein in tennis instruction and serve as academic tutors for the youngsters enrolled in the program. Additional Mills undergraduate students also tutor program participants. To ensure that the initiative is comprehensive in scope, integral to the larger institution, and accountable, Mills undergraduates receive hourly wages for their work with MCTP through the work-study portion of their financial aid packages, and can apply to receive academic credit for their work through independent study.

The intention of the Mills Community Tennis Program is to provide a personalized tennis and academic tutoring program for a student population that reflects the ethnic diversity of Oakland, recruits parents as partners in their children's physical and academic education, and promotes strong community ties. The program introduces tennis to elementary and middle school students who have had very little or no exposure to the sport. The goal is to use tennis as a means to familiarize inner-city youth to a college environment and provide academic support to buoy their learning through the public school system. The children in this program will have the opportunity to continue tennis and academic instruction throughout their educational career. Once they reach middle school, MCTP participants have the opportunity to feed into Mills College’s nationally acclaimed Upward Bound program.