What makes college student mentoring programs successful?

Over the course of the spring and summer months, I had the opportunity to attend and present at several of the state and national private and career school conferences including the Arizona Private School Association (ASPA), the Association of Private Schools and Universities (APSCU), and the Northwest Career College Federation (NWCCF). It is always great to connect and share information with other educators in the private post-secondary sector. The tone of the conferences was set by the concern of the legislative issues that affect the sector, and many of the sessions focused on recruitment, compliance, assessment, quality educational outcomes, and employment outcomes for graduates. You can find my presentations and other resources for private and post-secondary schools at the Noel-Levitz website.

In my interactions with many of the attendees, I was interested in the best practices and takeaways for increasing student success and ultimately graduate outcomes. One of the most interesting topics concerned mentoring college students. We know from research that college mentoring programs can positively affect student success and graduate outcomes (Rhodes, 2008). However, in my experience, mentoring programs have some difficulty getting support and sustainability with private post-secondary schools. In one of my presentations a group shared their best practices, and I was particularly impressed with a mentoring program at Sumner College in Oregon. Sumner College is a private post-secondary school that uses mentoring to impact retention and graduate success, and that program has helped it achieve a 90 percent student retention rate. Carlie Jones, the director of operations at Sumner College who helped establish the mentoring program, described how it came together because of the joint efforts of the college’s student services department and the faculty and staff. She also made it clear that the program’s success would not be possible without the support and leadership from Sumner’s president, who personally mentored over a dozen students within a year. Sumner College has multiple campuses and is still small enough to be flexible within the parameters of the mentoring program. Key elements of the program include:

• All students (mentees) are assigned a mentor (faculty or staff, including the college president).
• Students are matched randomly with their faculty and staff mentors, which helps avoid conflicts of interest within their programs of study.
• Mentor and mentee assignments happen at orientation, so students begin the mentoring program as soon as possible. They can also change their assignments at any time based on the connection between the mentor and mentee.
• Mentors are trained and required initially to be in contact with mentees once a week, but they can adjust the frequency based on the needs of the mentee.

It is apparent that the efforts of the mentoring program affected student success and graduate completion rates, but moreover it reinforced the culture of student engagement. Interestingly, the success stories that Carlie shared involved the students’ academic and social preparedness and how mentoring influenced students’ lives by connecting them with resources to make them successful throughout the student life cycle.

Why some college student mentoring programs don’t work

The mentoring program at Sumner College has many of the same elements of other mentoring programs I have observed in the past. It is straightforward in its purpose and its design, requires little or no budget, and its results are impressive. But I also know that many mentoring programs do not get off the ground and have this kind of success. Why is that?

In the case of Sumner College, there are three institutional investments that have contributed to its success:

1. The commitment to the time involved from faculty, staff, and students, as well as relevant departments such as the student services department at Sumner College.
2. A champion, in this case the Director of Operations Carlie Jones.
3. Support from key leadership, as evidenced by Sumner College’s president being an active mentor to students.
4. Continuous review and evolution of the mentoring program, so that any challenges can be addressed and new opportunities for success discovered.

The program’s success is therefore dependent on the buy-in from staff and faculty and sharing the results of these efforts gives the program value. I had a chance to ask other campus professionals why so many mentoring programs do not work, and their responses showed that it is often a lack of investment in time and commitment from campus leaders. Some of their reasons included:

• Lack of resources to develop and implement a mentoring program
• The added responsibility of faculty and staff
• Duplication of staff responsibilities
• Lack of interest from students
• Mentoring happens ad hoc
• A failure to continue when there is a lack of success or progress, instead of re-evaluating and refining the mentoring program

Although there may be some relevance to these obstacles; it suggests the importance of having a driving force and leadership to support and influence the program’s success. This driving force can even influence student interest, as students will be more likely to take a campus mentoring program seriously if the faculty, staff, and administration show a strong commitment and demonstrate its value.

Student engagement is essential to student success and student outcomes, and mentoring programs are one example of an initiative that can create a student-focused culture.  With the new school year underway, it is important to assess the needs of your students and to review different assessment tools that can assess and support key initiatives on your campus.

What can you do to facilitate greater student success on your campus?

Noel-Levitz has helped many campuses implement strategies like mentoring to increase student persistence. There are early-alert student motivational assessments that can provide valuable data on student strengths and challenges, along with student satisfaction-priorities assessments for examining what’s important to students and how satisfied they are. In fact, we can come to campus to conduct a student retention analysis. These can all provide valuable data and insight for student retention, as well as help rally the support of staff around key issues in student success.

I am also happy to discuss mentoring and student success with you. Please email me with any questions you have.

Citation

Rhodes, D. (2008). DOES MENTORING REALLY WORK FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS?.
Allied Academies International Conference: Proceedings Of The Academy Of Educational Leadership (AEL), 13(2), 62-66.