Studies show positive impact of mentors on students lasts years

Mentoring students generates student wellbeing and better results, such as good academic performance, adaptation to university life, and better-paid future careers.

This was pointed out by Jean Rhodes, Frank L. Boyden Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, during Tec de Monterrey’s 2022 National Teachers’ Conference.

During the conference, Rhodes shared the role that mentoring from professors and peers plays in the lives of university students.

“Those students who had a good mentor in college showed better educational attainment, better household income upon graduation, and even more time spent volunteering.”

CONECTA shares the most important points you need to know to take the mentoring model to the next level.

The importance of mentoring students

According to Jean, who has more than 30 years of mentoring experience, guidance is not only limited to university life, as it has repercussions up to ten years later.

She said that the first stage at which mentoring has an impact is during the transition from high school to college.

“Mentors are connecting with students during an important stage of their development, which is during this transition, when they leave their families and find themselves in a new environment,” the doctor emphasized.

“To help students, you don’t need the support of a single mentor, you need a whole network of mentors.”

Rhodes highlighted that effective mentoring can have tangible benefits on the subjective wellbeing of students. Her research shows that students who are mentored have more long-term benefits.

“Those students who had a good mentor in college showed better educational attainment, better household income upon graduation, and even more time spent volunteering,” Rhodes shared of her sample of 11,000 students.

In the psychological field, the expert highlighted how mentoring helps students to face issues like academic alienation, self-efficacy, and even issues of anxiety and stress.

Different mentoring styles and sources

While Jean Rhodes shares that there are a variety of sources from which college students can find mentors, she admits that they won’t all have the same impact.

She said that two types can stand out from all this variety: 

• Those with long-standing and strong pre-college relationships with students.
• Those with newer and weaker relationships that students forged once in college.

According to Jean’s findings, the second group shows better long-term results for students, both in their abilities, sense of belonging to their alma mater, and even in their future salaries.

“These types of mentors provide an advantage in terms of bonding, which allows students to make connections in the workplace more easily,” she explained.

She also said that there can be more than one mentor supporting students, saying: 

“To help students, you don’t need the support of a single mentor, you need a whole network of mentors.”

Among the characteristics she considers vital for successful mentoring, she noted those mentors who are capable of reinforcing positive attitudes in students, as well as an openness to seeking help.

Rhodes emphasized the work of those mentors who are able to work on their own biases and recognize the specific circumstances their students are facing, especially marginalized students, such as:

• A disparity in access to education
• Implicit or explicit bias
• Financial, family, or household responsibilities
• A “hidden” curriculum or label when writing to teachers or directors to ask for support

How to offer effective mentoring

Faced with the question of how mentoring can be given to help university students, the researcher said: “It’s important to teach and not to punish.”

In terms of attitudes that can help improve your mentoring style, the academic noted the importance of:

• Reinforcing a positive and supportive mindset in which there is no fear about asking for and giving help
• Being proactive and reaching out to students if they aren’t reaching out on their own accord
• Seeking and normalizing contact between mentors, mentees, and peers
• Recognizing the various sources of mentoring
• Focusing and finding shared interests that might arise during mentoring

As a final point, Rhodes mentioned how essential it is to create and support mentoring programs, especially among peers.

“We need more programs that offer goals and structure, not just putting students together.”

National Teachers’ Conference (RNP)

The RNP is a conference organized by Tec de Monterrey on an annual basis. Professors from 25 campuses, the EGADE Business School, and the School of Government and Public Transformation get together, about which Juan Pablo Murra, Rector of Undergraduate and Graduate Studies, said:

“Professors share spaces for inspiration, dialogue, and collaboration to detect new opportunities and better practices, as well as get inspired and come up with projects that enrich the learning experience of our students at Tecnológico de Monterrey.”

The 2022 conference is being held on-campus at 4 venues: Monterrey campus, Mexico City campus, Guadalajara campus, and Querétaro campus.

Jean Rhodes was one of the speakers at the conference. She is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and the Society for Research and Community Action.

She is also a Health Policy Fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a Distinguished Fellow of the William T. Grant Foundation. 

In her new book, Older and Wiser: New Ideas for Youth Mentoring in the 21st Century, she describes the ways that mentoring programs can improve your results.

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