Easing the Transition to College Through Mentorship
Going to college can be a scary experience. You’re fresh out of high school, moving away from home, and starting at a whole new school where you probably don’t know many people. Knowing just one person can make so many of those fears fade away. That is why for my capstone project, I developed a mentoring program for Champlain College.
I have served as a Resident Advisor (RA) for three years now. In those years I have seen the unique struggles that first-year students experience. Whether it’s not knowing where things are, not knowing anyone, or struggling with the adjustment to college academics, first-years often need a lot of support. As an RA, you, unfortunately, don’t have time to give one-on-one support to every one of your residents. One-on-one support, however, could make a huge difference in the experience of first-year students. The mentorship program I have developed would provide first-year students with access to that kind of support.
The Project
The mentorship program I developed pairs first-year students with upperclassmen (2nd, 3rd, and 4th-years) who are intended to act as a resource for the first-years in the areas of academics, mental health, and adjustment to college life. This program aims to take some of the load off of Resident Advisors in first-year residence halls and give first-year students someone who can provide them one-on-one support. In addition, it aims to provide those who decide to become a mentor with the opportunity to develop important leadership, communication, and listening skills that can then be used in their lives post-college.
The bulk of my work on this project was focused on developing training for the mentors. Throughout my research, it was emphasized that in order for a mentoring program to be successful, the mentors need to be well prepared to act in their role. The pieces of training I outlined were mental health training, self-care training, campus resource training, and general mentoring practices training. These pieces of training are intended to ensure mentors are effective in their relationships with mentees but also take care of themselves.
Why Create a Mentoring Program?
Mentoring programs have been implemented successfully in a variety of different settings, from schools to workplaces. One of the places where these types of programs have been quite successful is in higher education institutions. Mentoring programs in colleges can help students succeed academically, adjust to college life, and also reduce attrition. Currently, the first-year retention rate at Champlain sits at 79% (Champlain College, 2021). While this is higher than the national average, it can still benefit from improvement. Students who are mentored also often have a more positive attitude towards school and are more likely to want to actively participate in the community (Eby, Allen, Evans, NG, & Dubois, 2008).
In addition to benefitting mentees, implementing this type of program would open up another valuable student leadership role that upperclassmen could participate in. Being a mentor can help students develop leadership skills, increase the learning they are doing in their own classes, gain valuable interpersonal skills, and also gain a sense of self-satisfaction. All of these skills will add to the professional development of Champlain students and will translate well into their careers after college (Lee, Sunerman, & Hastings, 2020).
Individual majors and divisions at Champlain have informal mentoring programs that they have developed and run themselves, but nothing has been established by the institution to be implemented throughout the school. The existence of these programs alone tells me that faculty members see the benefit and need for a program of this nature. Because of this, I believe that all students at Champlain could benefit from having a formal mentoring program.
The Process
While you may not be able to tell from the product, a lot of research went into this project. I did a lot of careful research to try and determine which training programs would be most beneficial as well as how to go about those pieces of training to ensure they are helpful. One problem I ran into was a lack of literature that outlined what pieces of training mentors went through as a part of successful mentoring programs. I was able to find a lot about structure and how training is important, but it was quite difficult to figure out what exactly that training should consist of. The topics I ended up deciding on were pieced together from many different articles and based on the perceptions mentors had in different mentoring programs and where they seemed to struggle the most in their mentoring relationships.
This project also went through a lot of iterations. Going in, I realized that I didn’t have a solid idea of what the physical product was going to be for this program. I had all of these ideas in my head but I didn’t really know how to best organize them. I also had quite a few struggles with the scope of the project. I really wanted to create a product that could actually be implemented. Originally I wanted to have a plan for this to be implemented within the next few semesters by the end of the project. Once I realized how hard it was to get meetings with all the necessary people and also still have time to create the documents for the program, I realized that was out of the question. After a few other ideas, I finally came to what I have now created: a guidebook of sorts that can be used as a guideline for a future mentoring program that I hope to inspire. With the copious amount of research I did, I hope that I have created a solid foundation for a mentoring program to be built upon in the near future.
If you are interested in reading my final product I have embedded it here:
References:
Champlain College. UCAN. (2021). Retrieved April 15, 2022, from https://ucan-network.org/champlain
Eby, L. T., Allen, T. D., Evans, S. C., Ng, T., & DuBois, D. L. (2008). Does mentoring matter?A multidisciplinary meta-analysis comparing mentored and non-mentored individuals. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 72, 254–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2007.04.005.
Lee, J., Sunerman, H., & Hastings, L. (2020). The Influence of Being a Mentor on Leadership Development: Recommendations for Curricular and Co-Curricular Experiences. Journal of Leadership Education, 19(3), 44–60.
