The First Year Experience
Since this decade has started, more freshmen having been dropping out of college during their first year experience. Between the years of 2021 and 2022, it was reported by the Education Data Initiative that 23.3% of first time bachelors student freshman withdrew from college in their first year. Being affected by raising tuition costs, motivational issues, and mental health issues it can seem reasonable why these students would withdraw from college.
The current first year student at Brigham Young University – Idaho is now different. To help with this, Brigham Young University – Idaho has a peer mentoring program to encourage first year students to belong and stay at their first year experience.
Peer Mentoring
This semester at Brigham Young University – Idaho was a pilot program where 120 New Student Mentors were hired onto to assist groups of 40 to 50 freshmen with their first year experience. I was one of those mentors.
One of the key themes of Brigham Young University – Idaho is to practice innovation. As an example of that, BYUI101 and gathering groups were introduced to the peer mentoring program where first semester student could learn more about the campus and feel connect to the school and community.
Project Outline
Since this was where I was working at the time, I was curious to see how the New Student Mentors were reacting to the program and what they were seeing from their point of view. To help prepare for this project I read 3 different books from Harvard about Persuasion, Conflict Management, and Psychological Safety. All of these books have helped me become aware and be able to communicate what is relevant to stakeholders.
Research Methodology
I met with one of the main stakeholders to see how I could best research the needs of the New Student Mentoring Program. He asked that I research happiness and the overall quality of the program. I chose to include how mentors like the program, what their drawbacks were, if they needed more resources or training provided to them. From the mentors that responded (n=48) most provided high remarks towards the program and environment that they work for.
Late September I conducted an anonymous focus group where mentors could freely speak about their experience. Most of my time during this project came from analyzing this focus group and the survey. I collected my own insights and used artificial intelligence to discover commonality the mentors were experiencing or missing.
All of this information was used to identify strengths, themes, and gaps in knowledge that could strengthen to the New Student Mentoring program and was added into a booklet (link below) to be given to the leaders of the New Student Mentoring Program. My recommendations consist of short term wins and long term solutions that will improve communication and the emotional intelligence of the mentors to facilitate deeper connection among first year students and more clear organizational communication through out the New Student Mentoring Program.