Highlight of the week — Findings from our mentorship report

Research has shown that mentoring provide mentees with a myriad of instrumental and psychosocial benefits. We designed our mentor training and programs in line with this research to ensure the most successful mentoring programs possible.

Here are some of the benefits of a Project Access Mentorship Program:

• Instrumental benefits of mentoring include: information provision, access to new/other social networks, direct application assistance, skill set development, and promoting reflection on higher education goals
• Psychosocial benefits include: improving mentees’ self-esteem, psychological well-being, social skills , self-efficacy, and higher education aspirations
• Mentoring can also mitigate “summer melt” (i.e. disadvantaged students failing higher education enrolment despite receiving offers) through emotional support, improving university environment familiarity, and dispelling fears related to higher education
• Psychosocial support in university also can help ameliorate negative emotions caused by school transitions and increase student motivation, thereby reducing student attrition rates