2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work in Progress: Exploring the Use of Faculty and Peer Mentoring as a Tool to Support Engineering Transfer Students’ Transition

Motivation/Background
This Work in Progress paper will investigate the mentoring experiences of transfer engineering students during their first year at a four-year university. One issue that has been commonly discussed is the transfer shock that transfer students experience right after their transition from their community college to a four-year university and its impact on their academic persistence and success (e.g., Lakin and Elliott, 2016; Smith et al, 2021). Amongst a number of other factors, one of the factors identified as a potential cause contributing to this transfer shock is the lack of personal relationships with faculty and a lack of social integration into their peer group (e.g., Monroe, 2006, Walker & Okpala, 2017). Transfer students’ perceptions of this lack of personal relationship has also been linked to less help seeking behavior shown by transfer students in some qualitative work (Elliott & Lakin, 2021). One of the tools identified as a potential remedy is the provision of quality interactions with faculty and peers through mentoring (Dhin & Zhang, 2020; Smith & Van Aken, 2020; Winterer et al., 2020). The current study focuses on low-income engineering transfer students from diverse backgrounds that received faculty and peer mentoring as part of a scholarship program to help them with the transition and to secure their retention and success in the engineering program. In this program, transfer students received two types of mentoring. Based on their chosen engineering major, they were matched with an individual faculty mentor to provide them with guidance. In addition, they were matched with a more advanced transfer student in their major to promote social integration. The aim of the current study is to explore students’ perceptions of the mentoring program in terms of its benefits and opportunities for improvement.

Methods/Assessment
To assess the engineering transfer students’ mentoring experiences, two sources will be used. Students will receive a survey that assesses students’ experiences with their faculty and peer mentor (targeted n=50). The survey will include questions about the frequency and mode of interaction with their mentors, their perceptions of their mentors’ competencies including their cultural sensitivity using established scales (e.g., Mentoring Competency Assessment Scale; Fleming et al, 2013) and their feedback on their mentor relationships using open-ended questions. In addition, a subsample of students will be invited to participate in an in-depth interview to learn about their mentoring experiences as an engineering student throughout the scholarship program in more detail (targeted n=15). To this end, a detailed interview script has been developed that aims to assess students’ perceptions of their own identity as an aspiring engineer, their conceptions of mentoring and their perceptions of the benefits of having a faculty and peer mentor and the way their mentors support them. The interview script will be further adapted as needed throughout the data collection to address any areas of importance to transfer students.

Anticipated Results
We anticipate learning about the way and modes that transfer students interact with their mentors and the perceived competencies of mentors to address transfer students’ needs using survey results. In addition, we will be able to identify behavior shown by mentors that is perceived as either supportive or unsupportive by transfer students. To this end, we will code for qualitative themes emerging (a) from open-ended answers given in the survey and (b) the interviews. We will also explore whether we can identify issues raised by students that could not be addressed effectively through mentoring. Findings will highlight the specific needs of low-income engineering transfer students from diverse backgrounds that can be met by participating in a mentoring program. In addition, findings will be used to improve the existing mentoring program as well as help in developing guidelines for establishing similar mentoring programs for low-income engineering transfer students from diverse backgrounds at other institutions to support student retention and success.