James Coller is an engineering graduate student at the University of Michigan where he also completed his B.S. in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering in 2017. He spent three years during his undergraduate education as an Instructional Assistant for a first year engineering course. His research interests include autonomous robotics for both land and marine environments as well as naval ship design problems. Mr. Magel Su, University of MichiganMagel Su is a current undergraduate student at the University of Michigan studying materials science and engineering with a minor in chemistry. He is also a member of the engineering honors program, an instructor for a first-year engineering design course, and a researcher in the Yalisove Lab Group. Assessment of Peer Mentoring of Teams in a First Year Design-Build-TestCommunicate Class AbstractPeer mentoring has been associated with beneficial outcomes in higher education, from increased retention of minority students [1] and women [2] to learning gains for both mentors and mentees [3] . Most of the peer mentoring relationships investigated in the literature are of mentors not tied to a specific course [e.g., 2 ]. This paper reports on how one section of a first year, intensive, projectbased learning class uses peer mentors to guide student teams throughout a design-build-test project in a first year engineering course.Our one-semester course is a four-credit combined technical and communication course. Students work in teams of four or five students to design, build, and test two underwater vessels (one an unpowered bathysphere, one a remotely operated vehicle [ROV]), as well as to report on those designs. Former students of the course participate as peer mentors, working directly with a single team to guide design decisions and provide feedback on all facets of the design and communication process.In Fall 2016, we conducted an assessment of our current peer mentoring system by surveying students and peer mentors. As all students in our section experience mentoring, we did not have a comparison group, but we did seek to understand the benefits and drawbacks of mentoring for both students and mentors. From this survey, as well as our experiences facilitating the course with peer mentors for eight semesters, we are able to report a few "best practices" for facilitating the peer mentoring experience in our context. Importantly, we find that both students and mentors benefit from the mentoring experience, enough to justify our efforts to manage it. We do note potential disadvantages of mentors, as well as possible ways to mediate these drawbacks. This report contains the results of the survey, as well as instructor conclusions on what aspects of the peer mentoring experience are most important for successful implementation.

is a lecturer in the Program in Technical Communication at the University of Michigan. She enjoys serving as a "communication coach" to students throughout the curriculum, and she's especially excited to work with first year and senior students, as well as engineering project teams, as they navigate the more open-ended communication decisions involved in describing the products of open-ended design scenarios.

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is an engineering PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan focusing on the development of a novel multi-layer network approach to understanding design complexity in unmanned maritime vehicles. James also completed his BSE and MSE in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering in 2017 and 2018 respectively and a MS in Robotics in 2019 at Michigan. His research interests include autonomous robotics for both land and marine environments, ship design for the U.S. Navy, and improving equity and inclusion in engineering learning environments. James spent three years during his undergraduate education as an instructional aide for the design-buildtest-communicate course described within this paper. Since leaving the instructional staff, James continues to work with the course to research educational methods. James is also an occasional guest lecturer for this course teaching about field robotics and team communication challenges.