Date

12-21-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Many first-year and second-year undergraduate students face challenges and abundance of college resources they may not know how to use. Learning about campus resources and dealing with these challenges could help students thrive academically and personally in the college environment. We gathered survey data from 87 students from seven sections of the Bridgewater State University Orientation to the Psychology Major (OPM) course. In one of these sections, we implemented a Peer Mentoring Program (PMP). We also hosted psychology-focused events in which 48 psychology major students attended and filled out feedback questionnaires. In this study we aimed to analyze the effectiveness of the PMP. Our results were mostly non-significant, but we did find that non-mentored students felt they were able to advocate for themselves and their needs better than mentored students, the Alumni Panel successfully taught students about the psychology major and career paths, and most students heard about the events through e-mail distribution rather than flyers. We speculate that the statistically insignificant results were due to several limitations, which can be remedied in future research assessing future directions for the PMP, such as replicating findings with larger sample sizes and testing whether online vs. in-person students respond differently to peer mentoring.

Department

Psychology

Thesis Comittee

Dr. Ashley Hansen-Brown, Thesis Advisor
Dr. Theresa Jackson, Committee Member
Dr. Sandy Neargarder, Committee Member

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