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1. Graduate student peer mentoring experiences as a component of a multi-faceted graduate teacher training program

   Funkhouser, Kelsey ; Gomez, Josias ; Manzanares, RaKissa ; Harrell-Williams, Leigh ; Jacobson, Michael ( January 2021 , 2021 Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education Reports)

   Karunakaran, S. S. ; Higgins, A. (Ed.)

   Peer mentoring programs are one approach to improving the pedagogical development of mathematical sciences graduate students. This paper describes the peer mentoring experiences at three institutions that have implemented a multi-faceted GTA professional development program. Data was collected from surveys and focus groups conducted with graduate teaching assistants at each institution regarding mentees’ ratings of their mentors, mentors’ ratings of their impact on mentees, mentors’ impressions of the benefits and challenges of peer mentoring, and mentees and mentors’ ratings of program components related to support from mentors, their TA coach, program staff, and other graduate students. Most GTAs found value in participating in the peer mentoring program. While the mentees found their mentors to be significant to their own success and effectiveness, the mentors did not rate themselves as high as the mentees rated them with respect to their own significance in impacting the effectiveness of their mentee. 

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2. Exploring Dissonance and Harmony Among Mentees and Mentors' Conceptualizations of Effective Peer Teaching Mentorship

   Lanius, M. ; Harrell-Williams, L. ; Manzanares, R. ; Funkhouser, K. ; Gomez, J. ( November 2022 , Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education.)

   Lischka, A. E. ; Dyer, E. B. ; Jones, R. S. ; Lovett, J. N. ; Strayer, J. ; Drown, S. (Ed.)

   Graduate student peer-mentoring programs benefit participants by providing unique academic, social, psychological, and career development opportunities (Lorenzatti et al., 2019). However, the positive effects of research-oriented peer-mentoring programs are much better understood than teaching-oriented ones. In our poster, we consider mentees and mentors’ perceptions of effective mentoring in a teaching-oriented peer mentorship program. 

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3. Scholars From Underrepresented Groups in Engineering and the Social Sciences (SURGE) Capacity in Disasters: The Benefits and Challenges of Mentoring for Racial and Ethnic Minority Graduate Students

   Villarreal, Melissa ; Campbell, Nnenia ( January 2023 , Higher learning research communications)

   Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the mentoring program of the Minority Scholars from Under-Represented Groups in Engineering and the Social Sciences (SURGE) Capacity in Disasters initiative, a pilot program that aimed to address the challenges that graduate students of color face in academic programs. SURGE promotes mentoring and professional development through its mentoring program for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students. Methods: Data collection involved distributing online surveys designed in Qualtrics to mentors and mentees five months after the SURGE program’s initiation. Separate surveys were created for student mentees and faculty mentors in order to collect feedback about the mentoring program. Mentees and mentors were also asked to rate their satisfaction with the specific individuals in their mentoring network so that the evaluation team could identify issues that arose across participants. Results: We found that students had several motivations for and expectations from SURGE. A majority of the students found the SURGE mentoring program to have been at least somewhat valuable in helping them achieve these expectations. Nonetheless, students did identify a few challenges, namely lack of swift responsiveness from some mentors, not enough guidance on navigating the mentor-mentee relationship, and little to no in-person interaction. While half of the students mentioned that some individuals within their mentoring team were hard to reach, a majority remained satisfied with the overall responsiveness of their mentors. This suggests that the many-to-many mentoring model helped to ensure none were entirely dissatisfied on this measure. Conclusions: These findings support previous research and show promise for mentoring as an effective intervention to the challenges that underrepresented students face in their academic programs and for their retention and representation, particularly in hazards and disaster-related fields. 

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4. Exploring Factors and Support for Effective Faculty Mentoring of Undergraduate Students in Engineering

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46675  

   Baka, Sarah ; Brozina, Cory ( June 2024 , ASEE Conferences)

   This full research paper explores the role of faculty mentors in supporting student mentees. Faculty mentors of undergraduate students have the ability to make an academic, professional, and/or personal impact on their students. For example, mentors may provide assistance with course planning, share career goal feedback, offer life advice, etc. The benefits of these relationships may prove to be especially valuable in competitive fields such as engineering. While students stand to gain much in mentor/mentee relationships, these interactions can be mutually beneficial, producing positive effects for mentors. Despite the importance of faculty mentoring undergraduate students, there is a gap in understanding what enables faculty mentors to feel effective in their roles. The majority of studies focus on student-related outcomes and do not delve into the mentors’ side of the relationship. Addressing this gap can serve to enhance the quality of student education by providing insight into mentoring relationships. This paper will utilize Zachary’s model for effective mentoring to understand the foundation of effective mentoring. This model provides a framework for understanding mentor-mentee interactions by describing the seven elements of an effective relationship: reciprocity, learning, relationship, partnership, collaboration, mutually defined goals, and development. Mentors in academia are put in the position to orchestrate student growth through these areas by lending their guidance and expertise. In order to better understand the faculty mentor experience within one-on-one and small-group faculty-to-student mentoring relationships in the undergraduate setting, this qualitative project will study a cohort of engineering faculty mentors of undergraduate engineering students at a mid-sized research university in the Midwest. Two research questions will be examined: a. What are the factors that enable faculty mentors of undergraduate engineering students to feel effective in their role? b. How can engineering faculty be supported to enhance their mentoring interactions? The primary focus of this study will be to fill a critical gap in the understanding of faculty mentoring of undergraduate students by investigating the factors that enable faculty mentors to feel effective and proposing strategies for their support. 

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5. Piloting a Socio-Culturally Responsive Peer-Mentoring Program to Promote HLX+ Students’ Sense of Belonging in Engineering Education: Lessons Learned from Year 1

   Joslyn, Cole Hatfield ; Golding, Peter ( June 2023 , 2023 American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition)

   An abundance of literature demonstrates that women’s and minorities’ sense of belonging, or lack thereof, influences their academic performance and persistence in STEM education and careers. To address this problem, we developed a holistic, socio-culturally responsive peer-mentoring program that provided an academic, institutional, and social support system for first-year engineering students. The purpose of this program, Promoviendo el Éxito Estudiantil a través de un Sistema de Apollo (PromESA), is to increase students’ sense of belonging and, by extension, their persistence and graduation rates in engineering, particularly for Latinx students and their intersectionalities. The pilot mentoring program was integrated into a first-year sequence of courses where students would meet with their peer-mentors (i.e., Compañeros/as) during class time. Compañeros/as (Compas for short) provided their mentees with assistance such as tutoring, advising, directing them to available university services and, equally important, emotional support through building friendship, confirmation, and affirmation to improve the students’ sense of belonging. The research seeks to identify academic, institutional, and social support elements that positively influence students’ sense of belonging and explore how integrating Latinx cultural assets and values influence Latinx students’ perceptions of engineering. Findings from the first year of implementation reveal that participants with peer-mentors from their academic major reported a higher sense of belonging than participants with peer-mentors from other academic majors. Also, participants reported receiving social support (i.e., peer and classroom), regardless of academic major. Participant feedback was mixed, with some reporting that peer-mentoring was a key contributor to their sense of belonging while others reported that it contributed somewhat to their sense of belonging and a few reported that it did not contribute to their sense of belonging at all. 

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