Friendly Mentor or Former Consultant: Peer Mentors in First-Year Engineering Courses

Someh, Leila Keyvani; O’Connell, Brian; Grahame, Kathryn Schulte; Levi, Jake; Hansberry, Whitney Elise; Swami, Vishrudan

doi:10.18260/1-2--34691

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Results suggested that students participating in peer mentorship performed better, and in this cohort there was a preference for the scheduled peer mentoring option. Someh, et. al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Work-In-Progress: Applying Peer Mentorship in a First Year Engineering Course to Improve Student Learning and Retention Outcomes

McPheron

2022 ASEE Illinois-Indiana Section Conference Proceedings

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First-year engineering students may experience challenges in their transition to a university setting, in which they can struggle to feel integrated within the university community. They can find it difficult to connect with their academic program, faculty members, and peers. These challenges often pose barriers to academic success and retention. Mentorship programs for first-year students have been adopted by many universities to help students with this transition. Undergraduate peer mentorship allows first-year students to gain institutional knowledge, connect with the program community, and gain valuable relationships with upper-level students who can serve as resources and mentors. We have begun to develop a similar approach at Anderson University specifically for our first-year engineering students.In addition to serving as a resource for institutional connection, our peer mentors also serve as technical mentors. Our peer mentorship program is coupled with the engineering design project in the first-semester Intro to Engineering course, and mentors review their group's designs and progress and offer project management support.There are three specific research questions we wish to address related to peer mentorship in the context of first-year engineering students: RQ1: Do students feel that peer mentorship was valuable in connecting to the engineering program and community? RQ2: Does peer mentorship lead to better retention outcomes? RQ3: Does technical mentorship by upper-level engineering students promote greater academic success?This paper includes a short review of examples where mentorship has been successful in undergraduate engineering education, a detailed description of the system implemented at Anderson University, and initial results for the specific research questions described. This work is only in its beginning stages, and will be implemented for several more years to assess long term retention outcomes and student academic achievement.

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“…Results suggested that students participating in peer mentorship performed better, and in this cohort there was a preference for the scheduled peer mentoring option. Someh, et. al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…al. (2020) described the application of undergraduate peer mentors to support first-year students in a first-year cornerstone project [8]. The mentors were intended to help first-year students in the project achieve the required tasks, and to provide a source of institutional and program knowledge to the students they mentored.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work-In-Progress: Applying Peer Mentorship in a First Year Engineering Course to Improve Student Learning and Retention Outcomes

McPheron

2022 ASEE Illinois-Indiana Section Conference Proceedings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Friendly Mentor or Former Consultant: Peer Mentors in First-Year Engineering Courses

Cited by 1 publication

References 21 publications

Work-In-Progress: Applying Peer Mentorship in a First Year Engineering Course to Improve Student Learning and Retention Outcomes

Work-In-Progress: Applying Peer Mentorship in a First Year Engineering Course to Improve Student Learning and Retention Outcomes

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