2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This complete research paper focuses on undergraduate engineering students’ perceived effectiveness of their peer mentors. The study was conducted at a Western Institution of the United States during emergency hybrid learning conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Traditionally, mentors are thought to have more experience and may hold a power differential compared to their mentee. For example, a supervisor to an employee or a professor to a student. Contrastingly, peer mentorship occurs when a mentor and a mentee are at approximately at the same level regarding some part of their personal, professional, or academic path. For example, a peer mentor may be second year student with a first-year mentee or a one-year employee with a newly hired mentee. Peer mentorship has been shown to introduce a level of mutuality and interpersonal comfort that may not be available in traditional mentorships, allowing for trust and credibility to be built in the two-way relationship.

Identity, belonging, student experience, and emotional competency have all been shown to have improvements when in a positive peer mentorship as well as increased retention, particularly for those who are underrepresented or in the first year of their engineering program. These benefits can occur for both mentors and mentees in peer mentoring relationships. Even though the outcomes of peer mentorship are generally found to be positive, it is often underutilized as a way to support students psychosocially and in their academic trajectories. These responsibilities typically fall to faculty and staff who may not have the time or resources due to their other position demands to provide the additional mentorship students need.

At the end of 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, a mixed-methods dissertation study was conducted to determine students’ perceived needs for peer mentoring. In this study, 223 undergraduate engineering students provided their perceptions of peer mentoring needs via a newly developed exploratory mixed-methods instrument that was tested for both validity and reliability (i.e., quantitative Cronbach’s Alpha = .783; qualitative content and face validation in multiple rounds). The instrument started with a definition and examples of peer mentorship followed by a question to determine whether a student currently felt they had a peer mentor. This preceded 33 total quantitative items and 2 open-ended qualitative questions asked of all participants. Additionally, there were two additional open-ended qualitative questions for those who indicated they did not currently have a peer mentor and four open-ended qualitative questions for those who indicated they did currently have a peer mentor. All participants finished the survey with seven demographic questions.

The focus of this current analysis is to delve into the unexplored qualitative question: “What makes your peer mentor an effective peer mentor to you?”. Responses to this question were given by the 79 students who indicated they currently had a peer mentor. A phenomenological-type analysis of the responses to this question will summarize common practices and traits of an effective peer mentor. The paper will conclude with relevant and evidence-based practices mentors can use and should be trained on when participating in peer mentorships, particularly those that impact first year and underrepresented engineering students in an academic context.