A Constellation Model for Mentoring Undergraduates During COVID-19

Abstract

Conceptualizing mentoring beyond a traditional one-to-one mentor-mentee model, we utilized a constellation framework with collaborative co-mentoring among faculty, staff, near-peers, and community partners. We conducted a multi-method study to examine faculty, staff, and students’ perceptions of mentoring relationships, and we focus in this article on participants’ perceptions of how the global pandemic changed their mentoring relationships. Analyses of the study’s surveys and interviews yielded four primary themes: 1) scaffolded, developmental programming and a diverse set of mentors in an interconnected constellation positively impacts students’ and mentors’ experiences during unexpected challenges like a pandemic; 2) skilled mentoring requires a dynamic, individualized balance of instrumental, psychosocial, and reciprocal mentoring practices, taking into account unique aspects of students’ identities; 3) reduction of in-person relational mentoring was associated with significant challenges, but occasionally offset by opportunities; and 4) gaps exist in the campus ecosystem, especially for students with minoritized identities and students who are not participants in cohorted programs. A case study of a multi-year, experientially rich, and academically rigorous program highlights the potential of collaborative, interconnected, globally oriented mentoring constellations to support students’ personal, academic, and professional development, particularly when mentors were agile and adapted to new contexts. Challenges incurred in implementing a constellation model for undergraduate mentoring included scalability and capacity, particularly during the pandemic and when forming new relationships.

Igniting mentoring relationships with the FIRE2 toolkit

“…In 2021, Elon participated in the inaugural cohort of the American Council on Education (ACE) Learner Success Lab. Members of the project's steering committee conducted a comprehensive review of the literature and a self‐study including surveys and interviews with students, alumni, faculty, and staff, leading to an institutional definition of mentoring relationships (Vandermaas‐Peeler & Moore, 2022, para. 7–8):

Mentoring relationships are fundamentally developmental and learner‐centered.

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University Research Tutoring in A Formative and Preventive Environment

“…It is the engine that moves the gears of planning, preventively, without taking away the student's protagonism within this process (Ayala Carabajo, 2018;Vergara Litardo, 2023). The tutor maintains evident and coherent positions as ideals marked in two aspects, from his professional life and from his professional mission, allowing him to create a more just society and to train those who make up that society, from his training, competencies and expertise (Ayala Carabajo, 2009;Cárdenas Tapia et al, 2023;Vandermaas-Peeler et al, 2023;Yuliawati et al, 2023). The tutor, because of his great interest, motivation and sympathy for any form of administrative organization, puts all his efforts in the protection and achievement of the processes aimed at the training of the participant (Hermans, 2021;Shukla et al, 2022;Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, 2017).…”