First-Year Engineering Technology Students' Experiences with Peer Mentors

This research full paper describes first-year engineering technology students' perceptions and utilization of support from peer mentors. Prior research has highlighted students' challenges in adjusting to higher education while also establishing the need for developing a sense of belonging and disciplinary identity for success in engineering programs. Peer mentoring has been shown to ease students' transition from high school to college. This study was conducted in a college of engineering technology at an R2 (high research) university. Students admitted to the engineering technology Undeclared Program take a one-credit Undeclared Seminar course that introduces them to the field of engineering and the different majors through a mini-project, seminars, and interactions with professors, alumni, and current students. As part of the seminar course, students are assigned an upper-class student as a peer mentor. Peer mentors regularly interact with and support their mentees with different aspects of academic life. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed using the model of co-curricular support framework. The data analysis suggests that peer mentoring can help students with integration into the academic, social, professional, and university aspects of higher education. The analysis also identified issues that can affect the success of a peer mentoring program including the need for establishing a rapport between the mentors and the students they mentor, and ensuring that peer mentor activities are designed recognizing the already busy schedule of the first-year students.