1. Our mentor program is currently supervised by the Student Development Office who helps to identify and train mentors and the Freshman Seminar Coordinator and faculty members who have interaction with the mentors in the classroom. If your mentors receive credit, who supervises them?
2. What methods do you use to evaluate the mentor's success and involvement? We are thinking of using a student and faculty evaluation at the end of the term, program evaluations for out-of-class programs, and a mentor written response at the end. What evaluation process, forms, etc. do you use?
3. How many credit hours do your mentors receive? Currently the class is a 2 sh class for the students, but obviously the mentors aren't doing all the coursework that the students are required to do.

Any feedback, related experiences (positive and negative), and other issues not addressed above would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Jenny Bancroft
Director, Teaching and Learning Center
Mount Olive College
Direct Line: (919) 658-7792
Internal Ext.: 1185
Fax: (919) 658-7768
jbancroft@moc.edu

September 7, 2004 10:54am
RE: Credit Hours for Freshman Seminar Mentors

Our peer mentors receive one credit hour of FRS (Freshman Seminar). It is graded UN/SA by the Asst. Dean overseeing the program. It is extremely rare that a student receives a grade of "UN". More likely, if a mentor is performing unsatisfactorily, he/she is withdrawn from the program and the course.

Mary Higgins
Director of Student Retention
Creighton University
402-280-1212
Administration Bldg. #236
FAX 402-280-5762

September 7, 2004 12:49pm
RE: Credit Hours for Freshman Seminar Mentors

Jenny,

I just recently returned to graduate school to work on my Ph.D. full-time, but my previous position involved directing a Peer Mentor Program. Our Peer Mentors were awarded three hours of course credit as a reward for their services. They received one credit for a two-night, training workshop held in the spring and the other two credits for a weekly seminar in the fall.

I was the supervisors for all of our Peer Mentors, whose responsibility was to co-teach a first-year success seminar. I typically solicited nominations from faculty, staff, and
current Peer Mentors in the program. Then, I would send an application and brochure to those who were nominated. I would interview those who applied and then select those who best fit the needs of the position. I will tell you that mentors from previous years were eligible to return without having to reapply if they had received a good evaluation from their students, faculty co-instructor, and myself. I also had Peer Mentors evaluate the program at the end of the year, which included evaluation of their training, their faculty co-instructor, and me as the program coordinator.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any additional questions. My initial plan for my dissertation is something related to peer mentoring, so I am very interested in
continuing the dialogue on this subject. Take care.

Brad Harmon
Doctoral Intern for Staff Development and Judicial Programs
Department of University Housing
University of Georgia
(706) 542-2753

September 7, 2004 3:30pm
RE: Credit Hours for Freshman Seminar Mentors

Hi Jennifer (and all),
We are a small private liberal arts college, so this may or may not be helpful to you. We are in our first year of offering a freshman experience course. We have two levels of mentors: small group discussion leaders, who are sophomores and who receive college credit (1 sem cr). These students, nominated by faculty, student dev staff, and their peers, enroll in a 200-level "selected topics" course. As the instructor for the freshman course, I supervise these students. In addition to attending each class session (once per week) and leading the small group discussions (5-7 freshmen), these students must meet with me 3 times through the term and write a final reflection paper.

In addition, we have a group of upperclass mentors (also nominated by faculty, student dev staff, and peers) who will begin meeting with the freshmen in small groups (3-4 freshmen per group) once per week for the last seven weeks of the term. This follows a model of "accountability groups" that are already in place on our campus for spiritual development. The upperclass students who are willing to be mentors will not receive any compensation or college credit - we are appealing to the *intrinsic* values in mentoring, and because there is a strict selection process to even be nominated, it is likely that this is all the compensation these students need. These students will be led by a recent alumna who is planning to do future work with small groups and mentorships. She also is not receiving tangible compensation, but volunteered for the position. Otherwise, I would be their supervisor as well.

A key distinction, obviously, is our size. We have 50 freshmen in the course (out of 95 enrolled); larger schools will clearly have more logistics to consider. However, a universal solution seems to be offering college credit at a higher (200+) level for students who participate fully in the course, and requiring some additional assignments (meetings, reflection paper) to provide for evaluation.

Good luck!
Megan Enos
Warner Pacific College
Portland, OR

September 10, 2004 9:14am
RE: Credit Hours for Freshman Seminar Mentors

Hi Jenny, Brad, and others interested in “Peer Mentoring.”

This is the first year for our “Undergraduate Teaching Assistants” program at South Florida. Along with faculty from “Statistics for the Social Sciences,” we have developed an evaluative instrument for our TAs. It's almost in shape to distribute, but, as you can imagine, we've had a very messy semester opening. I've had more than one freshman student lose a home or suffer significant property damage. If you will please write me off-list, I will try to send you the instrument in the next two or three weeks.

Sorry for the cop out, but I think we're on to something good, and I'd like to share it.

Dave Campaigne
Coordinator : University Experience
Instructor
University of South Florida - Tampa