The Impacts of Mentorship on Dual Enrollment High School Students

Abstract

"Dual enrollment programs enable high school students to take community college courses and earn high school and college credits, saving two years of college expenses. However, many dual enrollment students lack a robust support system for success in college-level coursework and environment. The authors created an interdisciplinary mentorship program that pairs a volunteer dual enrollment senior student with a dual enrollment junior student in a longitudinal mentoring relationship to address this. This study examined mentors’ and mentees’ long-term evaluation of the program and its impacts. Thirty-nine mentors and mentees were randomly matched with a waitlist control group, and mentoring relationships lasted for a full academic quarter. Participants later completed an anonymous online feedback survey (based on the Likert Scale), with a response rate of 67% (n = 26). Mentees reported an average 1.37 Likert scale increase in their comfort in dual enrollment; mentors reported an average 2.43 Likert scale increase in confidence in teaching others. Mentees’ comfort in the college environment increased with the frequency of meetings (p<0.05); the number of meetings did not correlate to their grade point average (GPA) (p>0.05). Change in dual enrollment comfort was more significant among matched students than waitlisted (p<0.05). Notably, many dual enrollment programs have a ~10% student academic probation rate (GPA<2.0) each quarter; none of the mentees experienced academic probation, but this was not significant. Among mentees, 79% reported interest in being a mentor the following year. These results indicate that peer mentorship is crucial for dual enrollment student success and presents a self-sustaining model for the future."