Focusing on First-Year Mentorship

• Mentorship programs often focus on older students, but first-year undergraduates also can benefit from establishing relationships and building their networks.
• The First-Year Experience at Villanova Business School helps new students make personal connections, rather than leave those connections to chance.
• The Peer Mentorship Program at Flinders University matches groups of first-year undergraduates to older students who can offer tips about succeeding in university study.

 
The underlying goal of mentorship is to help individuals achieve greater success and happiness, and even feel a greater sense of connection and purpose, than they could on their own. Too often, however, undergraduate students don’t connect with mentors until their third or fourth year in college, or sometimes not even until after graduation. By that time, many already have struggled through much of their college experience—from navigating an unfamiliar campus to finding a network of friends—largely on their own.

That raises a question: How much could students benefit if they were connected to guides and mentors from their first moments on campus? If they had ready-made relationships with people who could answer their questions, direct them to resources, or just meet them for coffee, undergraduates might have richer, more fulfilling college experiences.

That thought inspired two schools to create early-stage mentorship programs for their incoming first-year students. In September, Villanova Business School (VSB) in Pennsylvania began the pilot of its First-Year Experience to help first-year students get their college careers off to the best start. Just this month, the College of Business, Government, and Law (CBGL) at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, starts its own Peer Mentoring Program for incoming undergraduates.

Each program is designed to fill students’ need for community at a time when they might feel most isolated. Program coordinators hope that if students establish connections at the outset of their programs, they will cultivate richer relationships, expand their personal networks, access support at critical times—and, eventually, achieve higher levels of success.

Cultivating a Sense of Belonging

Last year, Melinda German, VSB’s associate dean of undergraduate business programs, asked the senior-level students on her undergraduate student advisory council what the school could have done to make their educational experiences better. She was surprised when these students, now on the cusp of graduating, told her how much they struggled to navigate their first year on campus.

“They told me that they had trouble feeling connected,” says German. “Every once in a while, one student would say, ‘It was great that I had a relationship with this faculty person or this staff member.’ But some of those connections seemed really random.”

That sparked an idea: What if the school eliminated the random nature of these connections, and instead created a program that helped all students feel they belonged from the moment they stepped on campus?

That idea turned into the First-Year Experience (FYE). During this year’s pilot of the program, German and her team selected 138 students (about 40 percent of the incoming class) to participate; they then grouped the students into pairs and assigned each pair to a campus host. The hosts, all volunteers from either the faculty or staff, served not only as familiar faces to the students, but also campus guides and companions.

“We have programs that match older students to mentors by interest. But our first-year students don’t necessarily know yet what their interests are. They’re still exploring.” — Melinda German, Villanova Business School

German’s team chose to call the program’s volunteers “hosts” rather than “mentors” to better reflect the intent of the program—making students feel more comfortable and connected on campus. “We have programs that match older students to mentors by interest,” says German. “But our first-year students don’t necessarily know yet what their interests are. They’re still exploring.”

Identifying hosts. To recruit FYE hosts, German emailed an invitation to every full-time professor and most staff members across all offices and departments in the business school. In the end, 78 people volunteered. Before participants arrived on campus, they received an email letting them know that they had been chosen for the program and that their FYE hosts would be contacting them shortly.

Promoting informal interactions. Hosts were asked to meet at least once per semester with their assigned students for informal activities such as lunch, coffee chats, sporting events, and even walks on campus. Hosts also could introduce students to restaurants and other destinations on and off campus that might otherwise go undiscovered. If students met their hosts for meals on campus, the school provided vouchers to cover the cost.

Hosts were encouraged to meet their student pairs together, so that students could potentially form a friendship with a peer. “We wanted to make sure that students knew somebody else at the school who was not their advisor,” says German.

Providing support and referrals. All hosts were informed about who their students’ academic advisors were and what campus resources were available. This way, if students expressed a need for help, whether with their time management or mental well-being, their hosts could refer them to Learning Support Services, the counseling center, or another appropriate campus office.

Other than that, the volunteers received no formal training. German explains that she wanted to keep the program’s structure informal, so that students and hosts could plan interactions and shape their FYE experience for themselves.

The biggest challenge in implementing the FYE program was coordinating contact between hosts and students, says German. “Occasionally our hosts had to reach out to students a handful of times,” she says, “and some students did not respond at all.” COVID-19 also put many potential activities—such as day trips to Philadelphia to visit museums—on hold. However, German hopes to be able to do more off-campus outings later this spring.

Initial feedback has been very positive from students and their hosts. “Many of our staff members don’t have a lot of interaction with students just by the nature of their jobs,” says German, “so they have especially enjoyed participating in the program.”

Inviting Peers to Support Peers

Helping new students get off to a strong start is also the objective of the CBGL Peer Mentoring Program, just launched at Flinders University in February 2022. Administrators decided to create the program after a review of the school’s student services revealed that incoming students could use greater support during their first weeks on campus.

The resulting Peer Mentoring Program is based largely on the school’s New in Law Mentoring and Orientation Program, in place since 2007. Both initiatives are overseen by Samantha Kontra, a lecturer in law and the CBGL Mentoring Program Coordinator. Kontra herself participated in New in Law as a student mentor in 2008. 

Grouping students by subdiscipline. As a first step, the school assigned undergraduates to groups; each group will be under the purview of a single peer mentor. Peer mentors, explains Kontra, “are students in their second year and beyond, who can share tips and tricks about getting settled into university study, as well as their specific disciplines.”

Kontra and her team are trying to match students to mentors by subdiscipline—such as human resources management, accounting, or marketing. When possible, students also will be grouped with others who have followed similar pathways into college. For example, some students are enrolled in a “graduate entry program,” which is a shorter undergraduate program for students with prior knowledge in their field of study. Others come to CBGL after taking the Special Tertiary Admissions Test, which is a pathway to college for adults without other formal educational credentials.

Selecting mentors. In November, the college asked senior-level students who were interested in becoming peer mentors to submit their applications and undergo an interview process. Those selected for the program then went through a day and a half of training in early February, before being matched with groups of first-year students.

“Our program will begin to create a sense of connectedness and contribute to building a sense of agency for both mentors and mentees.” — Samantha Kontra, Flinders University

Meeting with mentees. This month, mentors personally invited each of their mentees to attend O’Week, the college’s weeklong orientation scheduled for later in February (due to the pandemic, this year’s event will be held online). During O’Week, students will attend discipline-specific sessions where they will meet key staff, learn about the curriculum and student associations, and interact with their mentors.

For the first six weeks of the semester, mentors will have once-weekly online group meetings with their mentees, with each meeting lasting between 30 to 60 minutes. For the last six weeks of the semester, meetings will occur once every other week. Mentors also will communicate via email to provide support on an ongoing basis. Like Villanova, the CBGL wants these communications to be largely driven by students, based on their questions and concerns.

This year, the college recruited seven mentors specifically for business disciplines. Although it is too early to confirm the number of student participants, Kontra says, these mentors could potentially serve up to 400 first-year business students. 

Through this program, the school hopes to provide new students with a stronger foundation on which to build their networks and pursue their studies, says Kontra. “This will begin to create a sense of connectedness and belonging within the university, college, discipline, and peer group, which is so important for first-year students,” she says. “It also contributes to building a sense of agency for both mentors and mentees.”

‘The Best Time to Start Is Now’

Both German and Kontra view their schools’ new programs as valuable first steps in helping students manage their transitions into college life. Such built-in support, they stress, has become even more important to address the sense of isolation that many students have felt during the COVID-19 pandemic. The coordinators also want new college students to realize that programs such as the FYE and CBGL Peer Mentoring Program are often available to help them settle in and succeed in their first months on campus.

Villanova’s German believes that FYE will create a more welcoming campus culture and help students establish more vibrant personal networks that they can expand and rely on over the next four years. That goal, she adds, is especially in line with the school’s efforts to support first-generation students and students from underrepresented populations.

Both coordinators plan to survey the participants later this semester and will use the feedback they receive to improve their programs in the future. Next year, to encourage greater student participation, German plans to announce the program more formally at the school’s orientation. She also hopes to recruit enough mentors to open FYE up to all first-year students at VSB.

German believes that starting the FYE pilot quickly meant that incoming students were more likely to receive the support they needed. “The best time to start this program is now,” she emphasizes. “If we had agonized over this, then it might never have happened. By running the pilot, we can get students’ initial feedback and find out what we can do differently going forward.”