Peer Student Mentoring for Nursing Program Persistence and Leadership Development

Abstract

Mentoring relationships are used in education, practice, and administration settings to foster professional growth.  Mentoring is a valuable process, requiring intentional, committed, and purposeful interactions between two or more professionals or students. At one rural university student retention and persistence was identified by administration as problematic. In response faculty devised and implemented a program providing students the opportunity to be a mentor or be mentored given that mentoring offers occasions for students to support one another while the more experienced student engages the less experienced student. This paper explains the findings of a three year cohort descriptive mentoring study utilizing a convenience sample of admitted senior students who served as mentors for first year student mentees interested in nursing. Mentors and mentees experienced rich engagement opportunities in formal and informal meetings as faculty evaluated student persistence and leadership skills.