A Mixed-Methods Approach to Explore Student Perceived Needs for Peer Mentorship in a College of Engineering

“Nobody makes it alone. Nobody has made it alone” (NOVA SHRM & Dulles SHRM, 2012, p. 5). Mentoring generally has positive outcomes, such as increasing output, staying in work or school, increasing confidence, and others (Campbell & Campbell, 2007; Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Eby et al., 2008; NASEM, 2019; Pfund et al., 2016). This dissertation study focused on student perceived needs for peer mentorship in engineering, which can fill in gaps of traditional mentorship by pairing mentors and mentees at similar levels, increasing comfort and emotional support to mentees (Allen et al., 2017; Haggard et al., 2011; Kram & Isabella, 1985; Meyers et al., 2010; NASEM, 2019). While there are peer mentorship programs in higher education, there is a lack of agreement on what is important. This is because of limited understanding (Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Gershenfeld, 2014; Jacobi, 1991). Most studies have focused on evaluating peer mentoring programs to find program issues instead of finding what students perceive as a need (Crisp & Cruz, 2009). Needs assessments are used to look at needs before building a program (Office of Migrant Education, 2001; Witkin & Altschuld, 1995). These can help in finding out and meeting student needs. Participant ideas can be vital in successfully making and running a peer mentorship program (Gershenfeld, 2014). There are few examples of studies being designed to explore student perceived needs for any type of formal mentorship program (Allen et al., 2017; Binkley & Brod, 2013; Breakey et al., 2018; Riley et al., 2014; Sawatzky & Enns, 2009; Sinclair et al., 2015; Tran et al., 2012; von der Borch et al., 2011). In undergraduate engineering education, only one work shows an assessment tool being used to explore the peer mentoring needs of engineering students (Jones & Waggenspack, 2017). The study by Jones & Waggenspack (2017) was limited because the needs assessment asked students to reflect on their needs while evaluating the existing program instead of before the program was designed. The lack of assessments of needs before the design of mentoring programs is concerning since institutions are investing money to keep students without ample evidence to support the need and success of those programs. Also, without understanding student ideas about formal peer mentoring programs, universities may cater to some students but not all. This dissertation aimed to find undergraduate engineering students’ common perceived needs for peer mentoring. This was in connection with training and matching/initiating considerations, which are important to the formation of a mentoring program. For this work, student perceived needs were considered an essence of the student experience in a higher education environment. As such, this dissertation focused on developing and validating a survey instrument. The instrument allows for collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data to better understand this essence. One unique element of this survey was that the procedures were conducted during COVID-19, which gave an opportunity to consider student perceived needs of both in-person and virtual mentoring relationships. The results serve to inform the process of developing and implementing appropriate training and matching/initiating standards of practice for peer mentorship programs within a College of Engineering

What Do Undergraduate Engineering Students at the Onset of Emergency Hybrid Learning During COVID-19 Say About Peer Mentorship?

This complete research paper addresses the perceptions of undergraduate engineering students during the onset of the worldwide pandemic (COVID-19) in an engineering college at a western institution of the United States. Specifically, these students were asked about their perceived needs around peer mentorship amidst pivoting between hybrid and in-person learning at the onset of COVID-19. Mentorship is defined as the interaction between two individuals whose goal is to help one another in psychosocial matters, support personal and professional growth, and provide career guidance. Generally, there are two main types of mentorships recognized: traditional and peer. Traditional mentorship involves a mentor who may be older, has much more experience, or holds a power differential when compared to the mentee. Peer mentorship is a relationship between two persons who are at approximately the same personal, professional, or educational stages (with one who may have slightly more experience). Peer mentorship has been shown to address both psychosocial and academic career support needs even though the individuals are at similar stages. Since these near-peers or step-ahead (i.e., mentors who are at the same or just slightly ahead in their development) mentors have recently been in the same situation as the mentee, there is a level of mutuality and interpersonal comfort built, allowing for both the mentor and mentee to benefit from the peer relationship, which may not be present in traditional mentorships. Peer mentorship generally has positive outcomes for both the mentor and mentee, especially for underrepresented and first-year students, specifically with regards to retention, persistence, and student experience. Despite this, peer mentorship is an often-overlooked resource for student support and success. Yet, peer mentoring may afford sustainable and economical ways to support students in their undergraduate programs while lessening the loads that many administrators, faculty, and staff juggle in their everyday academic responsibilities. From a solely retention standpoint, it is known that the first years of undergraduate engineering education is a pivotal time when many students leave engineering. According to the literature, introducing mentoring during the first year of a college education has been found to be effective at increasing both recruitment and retention in STEM fields. For example, Dennehy and Dasgupta found that undergraduate women in engineering majors having a same-gender peer mentor early in their education promoted retention and academic success. Freshman in engineering at the University of Arkansas who participated in a peer mentorship program were significantly more likely to return to campus after their first semester, and they also yielded a higher GPA than non-mentored students. Sanchez et al. found that those students who had peer mentors as a first-year student were overall more satisfied with their institution and had stronger intentions of persisting. However, all the aforementioned studies occurred in-person. While virtual peer mentoring programs are beginning to be explored in engineering, evaluation of student perceptions of their mentoring needs prior to beginning these campus initiatives are lacking. Even before COVID-19, scholarly research reported that feelings of isolation are common in virtual education situations, even for students that may be on-campus and taking fully or partially online courses; this was especially evident during COVID-19 where almost all students transitioned to emergency hybrid learning (EHL) situations and faced the challenge of distancing and isolation. The chain of events and lessons learned during the onset of COVID-19 set an important stage to situate students’ perceived mentoring needs for hybrid and fully online learning environments. As such, understanding these perceived needs before starting virtual mentoring programs will be important as the trends indicate an increasing demand for more accommodating learning and mentoring environments to more flexibly support students’ feelings of isolation, socialization experiences, learning gains, and equitable educational experiences. As part of a larger mixed-methods dissertation study by Christensen that took place during the Fall of 2020, 223 undergraduate engineering students shared perceptions about their needs with regards to peer mentorship during the early onset of EHL in COVID-19. The focus of this study is a secondary analysis of those student perceptions of peer mentoring needs. This analysis resulted in the development of four recommendations to support implementation of hybrid or fully online peer mentoring efforts, namely normalizing the integration of hybrid peer mentoring options, providing opportunities early and continually, talking about it often, and providing a variety of informal and formal opportunities

Peer mentorship: exploring the unmet needs of current mentees during Covid-19

Peer mentorship is a mutually beneficial relationship that allows two individuals who are at approximately the same experience level to interact with one another with the goal of providing personal, professional, or both types of support. It has been found that peer mentorship within academic settings have generally positive retention, persistence, and student experience outcomes for both mentors and mentees. While peer mentoring research and initiatives are growing, very few instances exist of determining student perceived needs regarding peer mentorship. As such, at a western institution in the United States, students were surveyed to self-report their perceived peer mentorship needs. This survey occurred during Fall 2021, just after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Out of 223 participants, 79 students indicated that they currently had a peer mentor at the time the survey was administered. Students were given both a definition and examples of peer mentorship before indicating they had a peer mentor. Their mentors may have been formally assigned through an existing program at the college of engineering of interest or informally obtained through their own efforts. These 79 participants were asked what additional support they wish their peer mentor could provide. Through phenomenological analysis of open-ended responses, common avenues for additional support were determined. These findings allowed for development of recommendations for shaping the future implementation of more targeted and beneficial peer mentoring initiatives. The recommendations include providing flexibility in peer mentorship, training on resources and events, and a variety of peer mentoring opportunities early and consistently

Descriptions Of Peer Mentors As Told By Undergraduate Engineering Student Mentees

Peer mentorship is a relationship between two people who are at a similar level. In this study, the setting is academic, namely peer mentorship amongst undergraduate engineering students. Within peer mentorship, participants aim to help one another through various activities, such as sharing information, helping motivate, providing advice, lending support, etc. The outcomes of peer mentorship are generally positive and mutually beneficial for mentors and mentees, but the focus of peer mentoring research in undergraduate engineering has primarily been focused on implementing and evaluating formalized peer mentoring efforts, not necessarily on the needs of students who may be in these relationships. To better understand students’ perceptions, students at a western institution in the United States were surveyed during Fall 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the 223 completed student survey responses, 79 indicated that they currently had a peer mentor when provided a definition and examples of peer mentorship. These 79 students were asked to describe their peer mentor both in terms of attributes (e.g., race, gender identity, year in school, first generational status, and major) and characteristics (e.g., enjoyment of engineering, value placed on engineering, career interests, extracurricular interests, hobbies, and effort exerted in engineering). Analysis of these student descriptions can provide recommendations of what may be important to students when finding their own peer mentors or peer mentoring advisors when attempting to formally match mentors to mentees

The Bell Academy: A Bridge Semester Where Engineering Students Transform Into Student Engineers Who Thrive In Industry Placements

Iron Range Engineering is an innovative learning program using project-based and work-based pedagogies. The Bell Academy (BA) is a semester-long bridge experience between the first two years of STEM foundation and the final two years spent in full-time industry co-op placements. The curriculum within the academy is delivered within three domains: technical, design, and professional. The transformation to thriving as a student engineer in an industry placement is intentionally embedded in each stage of the program as students develop higher levels of self-awareness, professional responsibility, and self-directedness. Students not only gain technical engineering knowledge, but also apply that knowledge within team-based, ill-structured design projects, acting as engineering consultants to industry clients. Technical learning is delivered in one-credit modules, which supports both the development of the individual as a student engineer and the execution of the project. Professional competencies are learned in-situ as teams encounter natural struggles. Development is supported through workshops, which cover topics such as conflict management, leadership, technical writing, data science, public speaking, inclusive action, etc. Through iterative assignments and practice, such as resume development, negotiation, and interviewing, students develop a skills portfolio to identify and acquire a position to begin and maintain their career. Through more than a decade of implementation, several unique learning strategies have been developed and refined. The paper will briefly describe the model used and provide the strategies as potential tools for adaptation and implementation in engineering programs worldwide

An Integrated Engineering Model for Advising

This evidence-based practice paper describes the theoretical foundations of the supportive advising practices used by the Integrated Engineering Department (IE) at Minnesota State University, Mankato. The driving motivation for the advising model is to support the development of student engineers as whole people. Generally in academia, faculty in traditional professor roles serve as formal advisors, mentors, facilitators, evaluators, and coaches and are joined by full-time staff that serve in roles to support student development. Integrated Engineers at Minnesota State University, Mankato are supported to become the engineer they want to be. This paper describes the unique model employed by IE of mentoring and advising that incorporates not just faculty but staff, industry mentors or facilitators, and peers that bring different perspectives to student support. Evidence of effectiveness includes high graduation rates, career placement rates of students, and student perceptions of preparation for meeting our program educational objectives. Perspectives from faculty new to the program and current and former students illustrate the personal impact of the model

An Exploration of Engineering Student Effort: Correlations toExam Performance

A presentation explaining the correlation between engineering students\u27 efforts and their exam performance

Stretched Too Much? A Case Study of Engineering Exam-Related Predicted Performance, Electrodermal Activity, and Heart Rate

Test writing is one of the essential activities that university faculty must do. Evidence-based instructional practice indicates that the exam content and difficulty should match the content taught in the course. Many faculty, however, hold the belief that tests should “stretch” students to tease out the best students or to extend content beyond what is covered in a course. In this case study, we explored if exam items, which are in the scope of the course but are “a stretch,” affected engineering students’ ability to self-monitor and reflect on performance. We compared and contrasted two examination experiences from the same engineering statics course. In scenario one, students recently learned a concept, and their practice exam reflected that content. In scenario two, students had yet to learn the concepts contained in the practice exams, but the concepts were related to the course. We explored this from a pre- and post-dicted expected performance, actual performance, and physiological response (electrodermal activity and heart rate) perspective for 26 engineering students. This research examines the relationship between expected performance, actual performance, time per question or exam, and arousal response. Findings suggest the pre- and post-dicted expected performances may influence physiological responses (e.g., electrodermal activity and heart rate), which may not necessarily support students\u27 actual performances on the exam

The dynamic experience of taking an examination: Ever changing cortisol and expectancy for success.

Background This study examined the relations between students' expectancies for success and a physiological component of test anxiety, salivary cortisol, during an authentic testing setting. Aims The aim of the study was to better understand the connection between shifts in students' control appraisals and changes in the physiological component of test anxiety. Sample The study comprised 45 undergraduate engineering majors in the United States. Methods Survey data concerning students' expectancy for success and saliva samples were taken before, during and after the practice midterm examination prior to their actual in-class examination. Results Students' expectancy for success declined during the examination while cortisol levels declined from the beginning to middle of the examination and began to increase again as a function of time. Although students' initial levels of expectancy for success and cortisol were not correlated, there was a negative relation between change in cortisol and change in expectancy for success. Conclusions Our study demonstrates a relation between salivary cortisol, a physiological component of test anxiety and students' expectancy for success in an authentic testing context. Most students saw a decrease in cortisol during the examination, suggesting anticipatory anxiety prior to the test and a return to homeostasis as the examination progressed. Some students, however, did not see a declination in cortisol, suggesting they may not have recovered from pre-examination anxiety. The negative relation between change in cortisol and expectancy for success suggests that students who had the greatest decrease in expectancy for success saw the smallest recovery in cortisol

Keeping Your Cool: Exploring Interactions Between Cortisol and Emotional Regulation on Test Performance

Presentation explaining the correlation between cortisol levels and emotional regulation during exam stress as it affects test performance