Mentoring: Bridging Cultural Gaps to
Support
a Successful College Career
Vincent Bruno (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY)
Steve Dauz (LaGuardia Community College/CUNY)
David Getchlik (Empire State College/SUNY)
These authors also gave a presentation based on this paper at the
2004 IMA conference
in Tampa Florida.
INDEX:
BACKGROUND RESEARCH
A student mentoring program is one of the interventions that can have a broad
impact on a significant number of new students. This support system is especially
crucial if the students come from a culture that is different from that in which
the college exists. This transitional re-socialization process involves:
- Dealing with culture shock
- Language acquisition, and...
- Internalization of academic, bureaucratic, and social norms, as well as...
- The values and expectation of college life (Chaskes, 1996).
Without support, it's no wonder that students are not retained in desirable numbers!
Research has found that students make the decision to leave college or change schools
at some point during the first year, often within the first six to eight weeks of
the first semester (Odell, 1996). According to Lang (2001), mentoring is one of the
six broad categories of programs needed to enhance the retention of multicultural
students on higher education campuses.
THE LAGUARDIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE MENTOR PROGRAM
LaGuardia Community College decided to use the strategy of a mentoring program to
counter the challenges students face and to positively impact the decisions students
make about staying in college. The Mentoring Program at LaGuardia Community College
was established by the 1st Year Committee in January 2001. The intent is to provide
a culturally diverse student population representing 167 countries with a personal
contact on the campus for guidance and advice which helps acclimate and service their
needs and thereby, to increase their success in college.
The original vision of the Mentoring Program was to establish a one-to-one relationship
for new students by connecting them to programs and services for their first semester
at the college. All faculty and staff members who serve as mentors are volunteers
and provide their services as a contribution to the college community.
Students are matched with mentors in a variety of ways, including:
- Similar cultural and/or language backgrounds
- By major and career interest.
As we enter our third year, the program continues to work towards connecting peer,
faculty and staff mentors with new students. During this period, over 1500 students
were matched with mentors to enable the mentees to begin their college career on
a positive note. Overall, in excess of 4000 students have participated in various
1st Year activities.
PROGRAM REFINEMENTS TO DATE
In addition to mentoring, the First Year Committee has continued to refine and increase
the impact of the program by adding the following program elements together to create
a comprehensive experience for new students.
- Mentoring students in Learning Communities
- Opening Sessions
- Common Readings
- Helping high school graduates by easing their transition to college through the
Summer Program
- E-Portfolio
- Utilizing peer mentors to act as role models for mentees on academic probation
- An E-Mentoring service for all evening students
PREPARING MENTORS FOR THEIR WORK
The college offers a wide array of training for potential faculty, staff and peer
mentors.
- Training workshops are available for all faculty and staff who express an interest
in being a mentor.
- Training for peer mentors includes:
- A three-credit "Mentoring: The Helping Hand" course
- A four session workshop
- An advance training series, and...
- A soon to be developed on-line blackboard service.
Mentors are trained to be aware of stereotypes, understand diversity, identify
learning disabilities, and to be self knowledgeable. Self knowledge is the most important
intercultural competency for a mentor to possess. Those who become conscious of their
own values and assumptions and critically examine them will be rewarded with a deeper
understanding of their own behavior (Mezirirow, 1978).
PROGRAM EVALUATION
Trained peer mentors receive a stipend and are required to record and reflect on
the results of their mentoring interventions. This ensures a means to assess the
impact of the mentoring relationship in addition to monitoring quality control.
An assessment pilot has yielded preliminary results which affirms the positive impact
of mentoring on mentees. Also, the assessment process has shown that students who
receive mentoring are retained at a higher rate (18%) during their first year when
compared to the students who did not participate in the program. In addition, according
to the findings of the 2002 ACT Opinion Survey, mentees report being more satisfied
than other students in receiving assistance when entering the college. Students who
received mentoring feel a sense of concern by the college as an individual and report
feeling satisfied with the college in general.
Listed below is a glimpse of some of the students' reflections on their mentoring
experience captured by a qualitative research study of the Mentoring Program. Reflection
is also used as a tool to help students realize their own progress, stay the course
as students, and focus attention on relationships and learning (Zachary, 2000).
> "My mentor has been instrumental in my success during my first year
of college. As an international student, the American college culture was entirely
new to me and I felt like a "fish out of water". The advice and counsel
I received allowed me to stay focused as a student. I have been on the Dean's List
for my first two semesters and I am looking forward to being on it for the rest of
my college life." - Student from the West Indies
> "Since I was given a Mentor my GPA has increased tremendously. I hope I
will be able to work with my mentor throughout my college career. He helped me academically
as well as in my personal affairs". - Student from China
Besides delivering a strong impact on mentees, positive statements from mentors
reinforce the view that the program is a success.
> "I found that being a mentor enabled me to play a positive role in the
student's first semester at LaGuardia. It allowed me to help the mentee understand
the policies and procedures of the college." -- LaGuardia Faculty
> "Mentoring is a golden opportunity to meet and help students as they begin
their journey at LaGuardia. The knowledge that you can make a difference is enormously
satisfying. Each new student that I work with gives me a chance to grow and learn
too." -- LaGuardia Staff Member
In addition to our own evaluation, LGCC and the Mentoring Program have received
external recognition. LaGuardia Community College has recently been recognized
as one of the top 13 colleges awarded the Institution of Excellence Award 2002 from
The Policy Center on the First Year of College.
THE FUTURE OF THE PROGRAM
The Mentoring Program will continue to address the obstacles that culturally diverse
students have traditionally faced with respect to uncertain funding resources, retention
and persistence, and academic and social integration. Grant opportunities will provide
the needed funding to offset cost factors involved in facilitating the mentoring
program. Retention efforts will be strengthened by having mentors help entering 1st
year students make meaningful connections to the college and their academic programs.
In addition, mentors provide an avenue for our multicultural student body to integrate
into our diverse college community.
Blake, Saufley, and Cowan (1973) discuss the "ultimate doom" syndrome.
For many minority and first generation students, there are subtle and sometimes more
overt messages that some students are not expected to succeed. The feelings frequently
become even stronger as the students approach graduation. Therefore mentoring efforts
need to continue into the second year and beyond.
The future direction of the Mentoring Program is to help bridge First Year Programs
to Second Year initiatives at the college. This seamless road needs to address the
disparities students feel after their 1st year. The initial sense of euphoria created
by the 1st year programs need to mature into personal satisfaction and realistic
on-track goals for graduation.
Other future directions will include the expansion of our Mentor Training Program
by incorporating leadership skills and diversity awareness components. Also we will
explore the utilization of technology in order to enhance E-mentoring and to extend
services to include the continuing student population that have been identified as
academically at-risk. Finally, recruitment of alumni mentors who will focus on graduating
students with respect to transfer and career goals will round off this comprehensive
Mentoring Program.
References
Lang, M. (2001). Student Retention in Higher Education: Some Conceptual and Programmatic
Perspectives. Journal of College Student Retention Vol. 13 num. 3224-225.
Chaskes, J. (1996). The First-Year Student as an Immigrant. Journal of the Freshman
Year Experience and Student Transition, 8(1), 79-91.
Odell, P.M. (1996). Avenues to Success in College: A Non-Credit Eight Week Freshman
Seminar. Journal of the Freshman Year Experience, 8, 19-92.
Zachary, L. J. (2000). To everything there is a Season. The Mentor's Guide, 56.
Mezirow, J. "Perspective Transformation." Adult Education, Feb. 1978.
Schreiner, L. A. and Pattengale, Jerry (2000). Visible Solutions for Invisible Students:
Helping Sophomores Succeed. Monograph Series # 31.
Blake, H.J., Saulfley, R.W., and Cowan K. (1973). The Struggles of Minority Students
at Predominately White Institutions.
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