To better understand the impact of the program, Merkel worked with Neil Lewis, Jr.,’13, an assistant professor of communication who conducts research on academic achievement, and Zach Berry, a doctoral student who studies organizational behavior. They surveyed the students and will use the resulting data to help address gaps in the program, making the experience even more rewarding for future cohorts.
The first phase of assessment focuses on how participating in the program affects students’ academic success, and the second part examines their psychological well-being.
“Part of a student’s academic success is making sure they are having a good psychological experience on campus, so we’re also measuring students’ sense of belonging, how they think about Cornell as a path for achieving their long-term goals, and how they think about the difficulties they experience here,” Lewis said.
“Inevitably, things are going to get hard. We want to know if having a peer mentor to turn to changes the way students are thinking about the difficulties they’re experiencing,” Lewis said.
The first cohort supported 60 incoming freshmen. The current program has expanded to work with 50 first-year and 22 incoming transfers who are all first-generation students. A big emphasis this year is developing peer mentor-mentee relationships with physical distancing and helping the mentees to build communities.
Throughout the fall semester, they have multiple opportunities to engage with their mentors in the program — allowing the researchers to see how much participation matters for improving academic success. Results from the first cohort showed that how much the new students engaged mattered a lot. Those who engaged with the program at every opportunity throughout their first semester at CALS reaped the largest benefits. They earned GPAs that were 0.61 higher than those who didn’t attend peer mentoring events. That’s the difference between averaging B+ and B- grades.
The data also showed that female students who engaged fully with the program appeared to benefit the most, whereas gains for male students were smaller, but still substantial, marking a 0.15 GPA gain.
Lewis said this type of holistic intervention is the kind of approach that helps students succeed, and it reduces disparities in academic achievement. “Providing academic guidance as well as social support helps students to navigate the often difficult, but important, journey of collegiate life,” he said. “Having those supports to turn to can be especially helpful to students who are the first in their families to walk along this path.”
He added, “But we can’t just create programs like this and assume they are helping — we have to rigorously evaluate them to find out who they are helping, how much are they helping, and why. That is the only way we can figure out what are the best ways to support and improve the lives of our students — lives that we hope will go on to improve other lives, and the world in which we live.”
A version of this story appears in the Cornell Chronicle.
Header image: Participants in the CALS peer mentoring program spend time getting to know each other. Photo: Dave Burbank, December 2019.
