- Paola Bandini
- https://ce.nmsu.edu/faculty-and-staff/rank/dr-paola-bandini-p-e/
- Associate Professor
- S-STEM: Increasing the success of low-income, academically talented students in engineering
- https://s-stem.nmsu.edu/
- New Mexico State University
- Martha Mitchell
- Professor
- S-STEM: Increasing the success of low-income, academically talented students in engineering
- https://s-stem.nmsu.edu/
- New Mexico State University
- Ana Natera
- Graduate ASsistant S-STEM Program Coordinator
- S-STEM: Increasing the success of low-income, academically talented students in engineering
- https://s-stem.nmsu.edu/
- New Mexico State University
Public Discussion
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Martha Mitchell
Professor
Hello! I'd like to introduce Paola Bandini, our co-presenter Pam Natera, and myself, Martha Mitchell.
We are extremely pleased to have the opportunity to show you the outcomes from our one-one-one faculty mentoring program for a cohort of undergraduate engineering students at New Mexico State University. This is a structured, multi-semester mentoring program. We have continued to provide support and interaction in a hybrid model this past year.
Barry Fishman
Professor
What an impressive program - with really impressive results! This program is sponsored by the NSF... is there sustainability planning for this work post-NSF funding? Is the approach something that you think any school or college might adopt, even without external funding?
Martha Mitchell
Professor
Thank you for your post! We are very proud of our outcomes. We have additional information we obtained from an external evaluator that we didn't include in the video. The evaluator conducted in-depth interviews of the cohort and found a positive impact that the scholar-faculty mentor relationships had on student success.
We are still working on our plan for sustaining the mentoring program after the grant funding ends. Our plan focuses on juniors and seniors, the groups that benefit the most from the faculty mentor. The program may be either at the college level or at the department level, where cohort-building would more naturally occur. The cadre of professional development speakers we have developed will be beneficial to our Eloy Torrez Engineering Learning Communities in Engineering at New Mexico State University.
Yes, I think this approach to faculty mentoring could be adopted by any school or college. The structured nature of the program, with formal pairing, accountability through a mentoring agreement, and check-ins to make sure the mentoring is going well for all involved, can be adapted in many settings. The model does not depend on funding, since the faculty are volunteers and there are not costs associated with undergraduate research. The challenges with scale-up, since many institutions have a larger student to faculty ratio, can be addressed with small group mentoring. We are currently using that model in another grant-funded project.
Jacqueline Genovesi
Love this project! Is the mentor template and SESSI available online? Have others tried using them?
Paola Bandini
Wells-Hatch Associate Professor
Thanks for watching our S-STEM project video. The SESSI instrument is not posted online at this time, but anyone can have a copy and use it by contacting our co-Principal Investigator Muhammed Dawood <dawood@nmsu.edu>. SESSI is being used in two ongoing NSF S-STEM projects and was developed in another NSF grant (PI: Dawood), all in the College of Engineering at New Mexico State University.
We plan to post the mentor-student agreement template in our project webpage this summer at https://s-stem.nmsu.edu/
Margie Vela
Senior Program Manager
Great program! I know many faculty are extremely busy and it is great that you have been able to recruit faculty volunteers. Is there any advice you can give other programs who would like to do the same on a limited budget?
Very impressive! Congrats!!!
Paola Bandini
Wells-Hatch Associate Professor
Thanks for visiting our project video. To implement this mentorship model, it is important to have the support of the College’s leadership. The College and Departments should incorporate the faculty participation into the Allocation of Effort and Annual Performance Evaluation criteria with a meaningful weight. In these documents, faculty mentorship could be incorporated as part of the faculty advising/teaching contributions, college-level or departmental service, and/or faculty contribution to student retention. Our advice is to carefully select the faculty mentors (e.g., matching interests, career paths, and personal interest or motivation of the faculty member on mentoring students). Documenting the positive impact of faculty mentorship on student success and degree completion will also help secure institutional support at the college and departmental levels to recognize the volunteer participation of mentors.
Margie Vela
Margie Vela
Senior Program Manager
This reflects great leadership that is truly committed to student success. Congrats on this achievement!
Martha Mitchell
Professor
Thank you very much!
John Coleman
Very impressive results! I will reach out to co-Principal Investigator Muhammed Dawood @ dawood@nmsu.edu regarding the SESSI instruments. Thank you for your kind offer.
Ning Wang
Very meaningful! Thanks for sharing
Martha Mitchell
Professor
Thank you for watching our video and for your positive feedback!
Ning Wang
Hector Castrillon Costa
Very interesting your program and the research attached to it. Me and my colleagues have a similar project in UTSA. I was wondering about the metacognition and self-efficacy section. Have you published any article/presentation regarding this section or can you share any references that you are using to draw for this section? Thanks for your great work and for your video. I really like it!!!!
Brian Foley
Professor
The one on one mentoring and group networking sound like excellent resources for students. Do you have any results yet in terms of graduation rates or academic achievement?
Paola Bandini
Wells-Hatch Associate Professor
Thank you for watching our video. We agree with you on the positive impact of the one-on-one mentoring and group mentoring on student performance and retention/graduation. Out of the 28 Scholars of the first cohort, 25 students completed their degrees, 2 continue in their academic programs (and continue participating in the S-STEM project activities with the second cohort), and 1 student withdrew from the university (for reasons not related to academic performance or academic standing). The second cohort includes 19 new Scholar and they are all scheduled to graduate by spring 2022.