Peer Mentoring: Impact On Mentees And Comparison With Non Participants

Peer mentoring programs are a method often implemented to help address retention in engineering especially during the first and second years of study. This study examines the impact of a well-established engineering peer mentoring program in a large eastern U.S. university. Peer mentoring programs for women, Hispanic and African American students had been in existence since the 1990’s. In fall 2005, the college increased the types of peer mentoring programs offered to include programs for male, transfer student, and general undergraduate engineering program participants. This increase in program offerings substantially increased overall mentor program participation and offered an opportunity for enhanced assessment and analysis. For this study, we analyzed both pre and post survey data from mentor program participants to look at the impact of program participation on intentions to persist and their feelings of belonging in engineering, and differences in post survey responses by gender, ethnicity and mentor program variations. Finally we report the actual retention / graduation data for this cohort of participants and discuss these figures relative to the overall college of engineering.