Cultivating community for first year students: Experiences in adapting a peer mentoring program to remote format

ABSTRACT

This full paper describes the transition of a makerspace peer mentoring program into a student engagement liaison program in an effort to support student connection and community building during the pandemic. Creating community for first year students is an essential component to developing a strong sense of belonging. Whether or not students feel as though they belong is closely linked to their likelihood of success. Remote learning and social distancing have made it more challenging for students to develop connections with one another which has led to challenges fostering belonging. The pandemic has required educators to come up with new strategies to cultivate student connections and enhance student engagement. With a focus on connecting students across engineering disciplines and academic levels, the Engineering and Design Department at Western Washington University adapted an existing peer mentoring program to enhance student engagement and build social networks for first year engineering students. This paper includes a discussion of the evolution from an on-campus, makerspace centered, peer mentoring program to an online, student engagement liaison program. Of particular interest is how the remote version of the program has provided new ways for students to connect virtually and has allowed first year students to develop relationships with upper-division students despite the physical disconnection that has occurred as a result of the pandemic. The authors share their insights and reflections on the process of adapting to online mentoring and summarize the challenges and opportunities of exploring new ways of connecting students. The new program will continue to be developed and modified as the department begins to resume in-person operations and adapts to the changing needs and expectations of incoming students. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021