Examining the Intersection of Graduate Student Funding, Mentoring and Training as a Mechanism of Success for Peer Mentors and their Mentees

Abstract

Examining the Intersection of Graduate Student Funding, Mentoring and Training as a Mechanism of Success for Peer Mentors and their MenteesSession Topic Preferences:-Issues in recruiting, building, and enabling diversity in engineering graduate education-Benefits in participating in federally-funded scholarship/fellowship programs that targetunderrepresented groupsMentoring and training in graduate school, most often considered the role that faculty andadministrators should have with students, is evolving to include graduate student peer mentoringrelationships. Peer mentoring, whether resulting from formal or informal programs, providesadditional support for talented students to successfully complete graduate degrees in engineering,especially PhDs for which the national completion rate is consistently around 50% according tothe Council of Graduate School’s PhD Completion Project. Specifically, for underrepresentedgraduate students (women, ethnic minorities, and citizens with disabilities) in engineering, whohave lower completion rates than their male, White, and international counterparts, applying forand receiving fellowships (e.g., National Science Foundation Graduate Research FellowshipProgram (NSF GRFP)) to fund their graduate education can increase the chance that thesestudents actually complete their degrees. While peer mentoring most often addresses traditionalgraduate student needs such as navigating one’s department and choosing a research advisor,some graduate schools also support more innovative examples, such as underrepresentedfellowship winners training burgeoning graduate students to apply for fellowships. In this paperwe present an example of a workshop series through which graduate student peer mentorscontributed to the engineering advanced degree pipeline by mentoring promising graduatestudents to successfully apply for and win prestigious graduate fellowships.The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) has notably created a program ofgraduate student support and professional development known as Success Seminars that includesannual graduate funding workshops sustained and expanded since 2007. The Success Seminarsand other programs are largely funded by NSF’s PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for GraduateEducation and the Professoriate (AGEP). Recent PhD recipients who were PROMISE peermentors while in their PhD programs uniquely led the funding workshops. In addition toencouraging fellowship applicants to use their research mentors and peers for applicationfeedback, the workshop facilitators served as experienced fellowship recipients and had the 1 opportunity to train and mentor promising students by reviewing applicants’ personal andresearch statements.Pre-and post-surveys implemented in 2012 and five years of participant testimonials providequantitative and qualitative data to evaluate workshop effectiveness and any increases inparticipants’ abilities to successfully apply for graduate funding. While several workshopparticipants have received NSF GRFs and other awards, our empirical analysis provides furtherevidence of the importance of this unique type of intervention. We also consider enhancementsin professional development for both participants and facilitators by increasing knowledge of andengagement within each student’s respective academic discipline, and improving overall writing,presentation, and proposal/grant writing abilities. In summary, this study assesses an emergingexample of how to increase success amongst all engineering graduate students as well as broadenparticipation of underrepresented minorities through sustained peer mentoring and training.However, not only does the study address increasing graduate student academic success, we alsodiscuss the capacity of interventions of this type to enable peer mentors to begin their legacy ofsuccess in mentoring and training early in their careers.