Peer mentoring gives rookies ?inside advice?

As peer mentoring programs catch on, more students are getting a little help from a friend.

By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

When Morgan Stuart arrived at a Tampa, Fla., graduate program fresh from Iowa, Steve Hall was ready to help him make the adjustment. Classes hadn?t even started when Hall gave Stuart a place to stay and the scoop on how to handle graduate school. And since Stuart didn?t have a car, Hall drove him to the grocery store throughout the year?each time advising Stuart on how to get cracking on his thesis.

Stuart is Hall?s assigned peer mentee in a 'Big Sibs, Little Sibs' program run by the doctoral program in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology at the University of South Florida (USF). Hall was determined to help Stuart as much as possible via the program because his own peer mentor two years earlier hadn?t had much direction from the program on how to mentor. As a result, she didn?t recommend which classes and research projects he should focus on. So he took on too much, and spread himself thin. And she didn?t advise him to start on his thesis early?part of the reason he?s still working on it, he says.

Hall wanted to keep Stuart from making the same mistakes he did. And apparently he was successful because Stuart says his relationship with Hall gave him something that mentoring from a faculty member couldn?t?inside information on the toughest classes and professors, what to relax about and what to obsess over.

Recognizing the value of such 'insider' advice, businesses were the first to formally encourage its exchange through peer-mentor-ing programs?a system of matching senior colleagues with junior colleagues or newcomers.

And now the peer-mentoring trend has begun spilling over into universities as well, says psychologist Tammy Allen, PhD, who matches mentoring pairs in USF?s I/O program. Not everyone agrees on the best way to set up peer mentoring, or even that it should be formalized at all, she says. But, increasingly, psychology programs across the country are giving it a try, from Florida to Texas and Ohio to Massachusetts.

'Hopefully, I?ve helped Morgan get a couple of steps ahead,' says Hall of his efforts. Actually, says Stuart, thanks to Hall?s help, he?s several leaps ahead. 'It looks like I?ll be defending my thesis this February, and that?s way ahead of schedule,' says Stuart, noting that most students don?t defend their theses until the third year, and he?s only halfway through his second.

Why peer mentoring?

The unique camaraderie and psychological support that peer mentors provide are an added buffer against isolation and dropout for new students, but peer mentors shouldn?t replace mentoring by faculty?part of the very foundation on which universities are built, says Allen.

In fact, some faculty oppose peer mentoring, claiming that it saddles students with a responsibility that really should be shouldered by faculty. It could be viewed as 'a way out' of mentoring by some faculty, says psychologist Stuart Tentoni, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin?Milwaukee. Other faculty point out that people don?t always click when you match them randomly instead of letting the relationship develop naturally. Hall?s failed connection with his 'Big Sib' is proof of that.

On the other hand, some educators say students find mentoring empowering and self-reinforcing rather than a burden. And, without a formal program, younger students might never benefit from the wisdom and companionship of their older peers, says Bernice Strauss, PhD, a psychologist at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.

'Mentoring is a lot like sex in that everyone thinks that it is very important, but no one ever talks about it,' says Strauss. 'We just hope that it develops haphazardly through divine chemistry. Instead we should approach mentoring like we do test-tube babies. If it doesn?t happen on its own, let?s see if we can make it happen.'

Matching

Strauss says peer-mentoring programs are particularly beneficial for minorities and women, who most often feel excluded in academe.

Such is the basis of a peer program that Strauss helped start for undergraduates at Sam Houston State. Strauss and the university?s assistant director of student activities, Carleton Green, started the program for minority students, but it?s now open to all interested students.

Program coordinators match students mostly by ethnic and cultural background, but students can request someone they know or someone with the same major. This year, 53 sophomores, juniors and seniors volunteered to be mentors, among them several psychology majors.

By comparison, a new peer-mentoring program in Ohio University?s clinical psychology doctoral program matches students by their research interests. 'We put child people with child people, health people with health people,' says Anna Campion, a fourth-year student who?s spearheaded the program. Likewise, the USF peer-mentoring program pairs students according to research interests, and it seeks also to match them by their research advisers, gender and geographic origins.

Meeting

USF?s Allen suggests announcing mentoring pairs during the summer so that mentors and mentees can begin conferring by telephone or e-mail before classes begin, the way Hall helped Stuart. Once students arrive on campus, most programs officially introduce the pairs at a kick-off meeting, orientation program or lunch, and many encourage the pairs to continue meeting at informal social events during the year. Sam Houston State, for example, throws pizza parties, and Ohio University plans a cook-out.

Mostly, however, it falls to the peer pairs to keep up the contact through lunches, e-mails, phone calls and the like. In the Sam Houston program?where pre-program training for mentors underscores the need for mentors to keep the relationship going?crews of mentors and mentees get together and go bowling. Mentors at Sam Houston can take on as many mentees as they wish, but they must be sure they have time for all of them.

Helping

Aside from regularly contacting mentees, the major task of a mentor is helping mentees with difficulties, says mentor Shaunte Alvarez, a Puerto Rican student and psychology major at Sam Houston. Mentees also typically want advice on gearing up for tough courses such as research methods and statistics.

Mentors also answer the torrent of questions doctoral students have about the pre-doctoral internship and dissertation. For example, Ohio?s Anna Campion has advised her mentee, Angie Buffington, on how to keep a written tally of her experiences for her internship application and whom she might consider selecting for her dissertation committee.

Campion is also helping Buffington adjust to small-town life in Athens, Ohio, after her move there from the city of Rochester, Minn. USF?s Stuart relied on Hall for the same sort of acclimatization when he arrived in Tampa from small-town Iowa.

'From the moment I arrived at USF, Steve was there to show me the ropes, and throughout the year, he?d always be there when I needed help with tests, papers, advice, anything,' says Stuart. 'He made me feel at home.'