Female peer mentors early in college have lasting positive impacts on female engineering students that persist beyond graduation

• Published in: Nature communications 2022-11, Vol.13 (1), p.6837-6837, Article 6837
• Main Authors: Wu, Deborah J., Thiem, Kelsey C., Dasgupta, Nilanjana
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 706/648/160; 706/689/477/2811; Colleges & universities; Emotions; Engineering; Engineering - education; Female; Females; Graduate studies; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Male; Males; Mentors - education; Mentors - psychology; multidisciplinary; Peer Group; Professional development; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Students; Students - psychology; Technical education; United States; Universities; Well being
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34508-x

Expanding the talent pipeline of students from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM has been a priority in the United States for decades. However, potential solutions to increase the number of such students in STEM academic pathways, measured using longitudinal randomized controlled trials in real-world contexts, have been limited. Here, we expand on an earlier investigation that reported results from a longitudinal field experiment in which undergraduate female students ( N  = 150) interested in engineering at college entry were randomly assigned a female peer mentor in engineering, a male peer mentor in engineering, or not assigned a mentor for their first year of college. While an earlier article presented findings from participants’ first two years of college, the current article reports the same participants’ academic experiences for each year in college through college graduation and one year post-graduation. Compared to the male peer mentor and no mentor condition, having a female peer mentor was associated with a significant improvement in participants’ psychological experiences in engineering, aspirations to pursue postgraduate engineering degrees, and emotional well-being. It was also associated with participants’ success in securing engineering internships and retention in STEM majors through college graduation. In sum, a low-cost, short peer mentoring intervention demonstrates benefits in promoting female students’ success in engineering from college entry, through one-year post-graduation. The authors report findings from their study of female student participants interested in engineering at college entry who were randomly assigned to a female peer mentor, male mentor, or no mentor for their first year of college. The authors show that students assigned to a female peer mentor show benefits in psychological experiences in engineering, aspirations to pursue postgraduate engineering degrees, and emotional well-being, which persists up to one year after graduation.