Embedding Student Voices in a Mentoring Programme for Underrepresented Student Groups: A Staff-Student Partnership

Practice Paper Recommended citation: Basugupta, S., Sanakkayala, S., & Sali, R. (2025). Embedding Student Voices in a Mentoring Programme for Underrepresented Student Groups: A Staff-Student Partnership. In Kangaslampi, R., Langie, G., Järvinen, H.-M., & Nagy, B. (Eds.), SEFI 53rd Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Tampere, Finland. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17631702. This Conference Paper is brought to you for open access by the 53rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) at Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. EMBEDDING STUDENT VOICES IN A MENTORING PROGRAMME FOR UNDERREPRESENTED STUDENT GROUPS: A STAFFSTUDENT PARTNERSHIP S Basugupta a, 1 , S Sanakkayala b, R Sali c, a Department of Chemical Engineering University College London, London, UK b Department of Computer Science University College London, London, UK c Department of Biochemical Engineering University College London, London, UK Conference Key Areas: Diversity, equity and inclusion in our universities and in our teaching; Engineering skills, professional skills, and transversal skills Keywords: Mentoring, Staff-student partnership, sense of belonging, Diversity, equity and inclusion, role models ABSTRACT The Engineering Coalition Mentoring Programme is an integrated peer and industrial mentoring scheme, designed for undergraduate engineering students from underrepresented student groups and disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. The programme was initiated in the academic year 2022-2023 and can support up to 60 students each year. It is a staff-student partnership with students and staff engaged in equal capacity during the programme design, delivery and leadership, ensuring that student voice is embedded all though the programme. The peer mentoring sessions are structured based on student inputs, with focus on wellbeing, inclusivity and networking, as well as more practical issues related to regular academic activities such as effectively using assessment feedback and handling conflicts within the team during group activities. The industrial mentoring sessions focus on career advancement and securing internships and jobs in a competitive market. All sessions are mostly held online, with only a few face-to-face events. Based on students’ feedback, both the peer and industrial mentoring have been effective for the mentees, enabling them to enhance their professional network and gain insights from the peer mentors about navigating any barrier faced during their academic journey. There has been emphasis on appropriate conduct for both mentors and mentees, for creating a safe space for conversation. 1 Corresponding Author S Basugupta [email protected] 1 INTRODUCTION Mentors guide and stimulate new ideas using their experiences in self-improvement, in alignment with mentee personality and requirements. Any mentorship scheme in the higher education space can be tailored towards specific student groups. Particularly, for students from the underrepresented groups, a mentoring scheme can be targeted to function like a development tool that focuses on motivation and empowerment. This should help to improve their overall learning experiences and enable them to reach their career potential in the university and beyond. The mentoring programme can create the safe space for conversations around challenges that might be specific to the underrepresented student groups, with discussion on how they can be best resolved to remove any barrier to learning and educational outcome. In the world of engineering in higher education, peer mentoring has been found to be very effective to foster social and academic integration (Le et al. 2024). It is commonly adopted by engineering departments and faculties to support students in the first and second year of their studies, to help the new entrants familiarise with the campus and academic environment. Studies have shown that peer interaction and mentoring is also valued by students beyond their initial year of studies and as their academic journey progresses. This can be based on sharing similar experiences, for example when the mentees and their peer mentors are matured students and have domestic responsibilities alongside pursuing higher education, in addition to common interests, age and generational similarities (Downey et al. 2023). Mentorship is also be provided by industrial mentors, to prepare mentees for a professional career in engineering by supporting them to enhance their employability skills. Industrial mentors play a crucial role, guiding mentees transition from the academia to the workplace. Industrial mentoring can be very important for underrepresented student groups as they often have lower access to knowledge sharing information and guidance than their peers and lack engineer role models to relate to as ‘people like me’. Considering the benefits of both peer and industrial mentoring, a mentoring programme integrating both and named the Engineering Coalition Mentoring Programme (ECMP) was initiated in the faculty of engineering for underrepresented student groups. In the college, women, students from low-income background, minority ethnicity are underrepresented. In addition, mature, career-experienced and estranged students, and those facing disability issues face barriers that affect their academic success. The programme was initiated in the academic year 2022-2023, and builds on two previous successful initiatives, targeted towards undergraduate ethnic minority students in two departments of the faculty. The first programme was a Changemakers project which focused only on industrial mentoring and was initiated in the department of Chemical Engineering in the academic year 2019-2020. The scheme reached out to 40 students across two academic years enabling ethnic minority students to build professional networks in collaboration with AFBE-UK (Association for BME Engineers). The peer mentoring programme was introduced in the department of Computer Science in the academic year 2021-2022 that engaged 45 mentees and 15 mentors. Both the programmes were very well received by mentors and mentees based on formal and informal feedback. This motivated the programme leads to collaborate and widen the reach of the programme to all departments of the faculty with additional resources. The intersectional identities of some of the mentees related to gender, disability and ethnicity, in addition to their experiences being first generation university attendee and belonging to low socio- economic backgrounds were noted in both the programmes. Consequently, the integrated ECMP is open to all undergraduate engineering students from underrepresented groups who experience a feeling of not belonging in the university space and finds it more challenging to develop an engineering identity. 2 CONTEXT AND PRACTICAL WORK: ESTABLISHING AN INTEGRATED MENTORING SCHEME FOCUSING ON STAFF-STUDENT PARTNERSHIP 2.1 ENGINEERING COALITION MENTORING PROGRAMME The Engineering Coalition Mentoring Programme (ECMP) can support up to 60 students, in any given academic year and is currently running for the 3rd year since its initiation in 2022. The mentoring programme integrates peer and industrial mentoring, with a vision of adding academic mentoring in the future (Figure 1). Most mentees are in their 1st or 2nd year of study, while only some of them are in their 3rd and 4th years. In the current academic year (2024-25), 43% of students are from the 1st year, 38% from the 2nd year, 17% from the 3rd year and 2% from the 4th year. The mentees are from 9 different departments of the faculty. The peer mentors are students from the 2nd year and upwards, including postgraduate and PhD students. The mentoring activities are based on student inputs and structured as a continuum from addressing belonging, identity and development to career planning and professional development (Ball and Hennessey, 2020). The sessions were mostly virtual to enable flexibility of attendance for both mentors and mentees, with some face-to-face options to complete the mentor-mentee conversational experience. There are also e-mentoring opportunities to extend the mentoring support for the mentees beyond the scheduled mentoring sessions. The sessions were structured with a combination of flash and group mentoring, which complemented the one-toone mentoring that was held out of the sessions. The flash mentoring was effective for mentees to have a more in-depth discussion in any session on a focused topic with a mentor of their choice. The group setting enabled individuals to share diverse perspectives and experiences. The mentor: mentee ratio in any given session never went below 1:6. Acknowledging that mentoring relationships are personal and reciprocal (Crisp and Cruz, 2009), mentors were allocated based on compatibility identified from applications. Mentees were later allowed to change and select their mentors where it was possible to facilitate that, as self-matching is expected to ensure a good mentoring relationship. Prior to the commencement of the programme, prospective mentees and peer mentors were invited to apply. The advert and the application form contained some details on the programme including a brief description, the number of sessions and expected time commitment from the mentors and mentees. Mentors were selected based on their motivation and any prior mentoring experience was an advantage. They were matched to mentees based on compatibility in terms of engineering discipline and relatable socio-economic backgrounds, as well as overlapping lived experiences (e.g. challenges due to disability, gender identity issues). Initial mentormentee matching involved careful consideration by the staff and student programme leads, although mentees were also given opportunities to self-match later. The data usage and sharing complies with college’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidance. The industrial mentors were identified through AFBE-UK (Association for BME Engineers). Based on shared information about the mentees on their engineering backgrounds, career aspirations and their expectations from industrial mentoring, the mentors were identified, who are engineers from diverse sectors (technology, energy, pharmaceutical and manufacturing). A key element of ECMP is the staff-student partnership with joint decision-making power and embedding students’ voice throughout the programme. This has been facilitated by creating space for students’ ideas and feedback alongside co-creation of the initiatives and ensuring that leadership opportunities are available to students. To begin with, the peer and industrial mentoring components of the programme were initiated independently, designed and led by a student and academic staff respectively at departmental levels. They were later integrated with some modification, to facilitate networking opportunities for undergraduate students from underrepresented groups, at multiple levels beyond their immediate departmental reach, to widen their engagement among peer groups and externally in the broader scientific field. While merging the two programmes, both the staff and student leads had the opportunity to review the initial programmes and discuss modification. The integrated programme now had a staff and a student lead. A team of three other student co-leads provide support to the programme leads. Two professional services staff help with budgeting and coordination and engages with the programme leads in an advisory capacity. The student co-leads work closely with the peer mentors (12-20) and programme leads to plan each session. They also coordinate with the mentors and mentees for feedback purposes. The programme leads update the faculty annually, receive feedback and discuss plan for the next academic year. The responsibilities of staff and students in their respective roles are outlined in Table 1. Many universities run independent peer and industrial mentoring programmes. There ar limited examples where both are integrated in the same programme. Also, most of these programmes are led by academics or professional services staff, that often limits students’ voice due to traditional power dynamics. Rarely, when they are led by students, they are restricted to specific student societies or individual departments. Also, there might be restricted access to resources such as communication channels and space bookings, budget and wider network for students to facilitate external collaboration. Managing these challenges can be challenging and time consuming and the workload for student leads can become unmanageable with academic pressure. Such a student led programme can be difficult to sustain over a longer period due to changing cohorts, graduating student leaders and finding suitable replacements. On the other hand, staff time can be accounted for in their workload, aligned to organisational strategy regarding engagement with EDI activities. Table 1. Staff and students engaged with the ECMP programme in different capacity. The number of people in each role is indicated in parentheses. Fig. 1. ECMP: A mentoring programme integrating peer, industrial and academic mentoring Role Responsibilities Students Programme lead (1) Design, plan and lead, manage resources, recruit mentors and co-leads, review programme, facilitate external collaboration Co-leads (3) Organise, coordinate and lead sessions/events, provide feedback (on overall programme) Mentors (12-20) Peer mentoring, provide feedback (on individual sessions) Mentees (60) Provide feedback (on individual sessions, events and overall programme) Staff Programme lead (1) Design, plan, lead and manage resources, recruit mentors and co-leads, organise, coordinate, administers and reviews programme, initiate and sustain external collaboration Programme administrators (2) Administer, publicise, manage budget, provide feedback on overall programme Faculty EDI implementation Group and other advisors Review programme and provide feedback, allocate budget The ECMP faculty-wide programme, not only embeds peer and industrial mentoring, but is also an example where staff and students have worked as partners sharing workload and perspectives. The aim of this programme was to establish an enabling, career-focused, motivating, personalised programme for the mentees. Towards this, in this paper we discuss what students wanted from peer and industrial mentoring, that was embedded in the programme. We also discuss how we ensured benefits for both mentors and mentees, enabling them to build a support system based on shared experiences, enhance their professional network and receive guidance on professional development aligned to their career aspirations. 2.2 Evaluation of the programme A mixed approach including preand post-activity responses from mentors and mentees in the form of semi-structured interviews and both formal and informal qualitative surveys have been used to identify actions and their impacts. Also, continuous reflection by mentors and the programme leaders and staff, based on responses and observations have been carefully considered to gain insights for improvement and longer-term planning. Further, details on the programme have been presented in different forums including faculty lunch-time seminar and EDI meetings as well as departmental EDI events and, as a mentoring focused invited talk in an Engineering conference at different points of time. Presenting in different platforms helped to obtain regular feedback and enabled exchange of ideas with wider perspectives from staff and students not directly engaged with the programme. Further, at the end of each academic year, the programme is reviewed by the leaders and staff, along with representative peer mentors and mentees. This ‘postmortem review’ session helps to reflect from a programme perspective and understand if the practices in place have been effective. This include reviewing all processes such as the mentor-mentee matching criteria, as well as, considering the progress towards the programme aim, support in place for delivery and overall programme administration. Further, a report on the programme is presented to the faculty at the end of each academic year by programme leads for strategically aligning the programme with the faculty and college’s plans for each academic year. 3 RESULTS AND INSIGHTS 3.1 Managing mentor and mentee expectations It is important to understand the expectations of mentors and mentees. An initial assessment is conducted on the expectations of both mentors and mentees based on the following open-ended, mandatory questions included in the application forms of the mentees and mentors respectively: Why are you interested in joining this programme? What motivated you to peer mentor for this programme? The motivation for mentors can be intrinsic or extrinsic (Malota, 2017). For this programme, based on the responses of peer mentors, it is evident that the key motivation is dominantly intrinsic and related to their own lived-in experiences (Figure 2). Most students felt a commitment towards allyship. While the remuneration awarded to the peer mentors was acknowledged, it wasn’t the main driving force. The students mentioned that they have found mentoring or being mentored in the past a rewarding experience and felt an urge to give back and pass it on to younger fellow students. Some students cited the lack of mentors in their lives as the driving force to be a peer mentor, as they consider that having a peer mentor would have significantly improved their overall learning experience during the initial period of their study in the college. Many peer mentors also want to share their experiences as students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds or belonging to underrepresented groups in engineering in general, and in the college, related to their racial, gender, sexual orientation or other protected characteristics, which often intersects or overlaps. For very few peer mentors, extrinsic motivational factors also played a role, such as growing their own network through peer mentoring, or improving their leadership and mentoring skills to enhance their CVs. It is interesting to note that for the majority of the mentees, the key motivation to join the programme is to enhance their professional network and advance their career with guidance from the mentors. For some students, sharing experiences in a safe space with peer mentors from similar, disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds or belonging to Fig. 3. Mentee expectations Fig. 2. Mentor motivational factors underrepresented student groups, and strategically navigating these barriers were also motivational factors for joining this programme. A mandatory, peer mentor training session of 1.5 hours is scheduled at the beginning of each academic year to set expectations and provide mentoring guidance, with emphasis on communication and appropriate conduct. The training is led by AFBE-UK industrial mentors and programme leaders. Mentees also have an induction session to clarify expectations. Both sessions are interactive to set the stage for inclusivity and enables everyone to discover a safe space for discussions. Both mentors and mentees have highlighted some key attributes for successful mentoring that are relevant in general for all mentor-mentee interactions but have been emphasised on for the programme. They include Empathy, Communicative, Motivating and Professional (ECMP attributes). 3.2 Peer and industrial mentoring sessions Table 2. ECMP sessions in a typical academic year A timeline of the programme is presented in Table 2. In each academic year there are two peer mentoring sessions in both terms 1 and 2, led by student lead and coleads. The student leads also plan the sessions with inputs from the staff programme lead. The staff programme leads helps to coordinate guest lectures when relevant to the session. The peer mentoring sessions focus on well-being, strategic career advancement, inclusivity, time management and building professional networks. The sessions are supported by invited speakers from the college including the faculty wellbeing coordinator and career advisor from the college central team. Sessions are held online via Zoom with group and flash mentoring. The discussions are held in the main room and then in the breakout rooms in smaller groups, supervised by the programme leads and co-leads. The mentors and mentees have also engaged in more practical discussions related to regular academic activities such as available support from personal tutor, using assessment feedback effectively, handling conflicts with team members during a group project, tips on transitioning from one year to the next and dealing with setbacks related to assessments. A collection of resources related to the topics have been developed by the student leads and the mentors for wider use. In between the virtual group sessions, there are intermittent one-to-one mentoring, where mentors and mentees can meet face-to-face or virtually. The general Term 1 Term 2 Summer term Mentor Training Industrial mentoring session 1 Conference/Networking event Programme induction Peer mentoring session 3 Programme review Peer mentoring session 1 (Group mentoring) Industrial mentoring session 1 (Online) One-to-one peer mentoring session One-to-one peer mentoring session Peer mentoring session 2 (Group mentoring) Peer mentoring session 4 Industrial mentoring session 2 (Online) One-to-one peer mentoring session (Face-to-face) suggestion for these meetings is to follow up on the discussions from the group sessions, but at greater depth and can be more personalised. However, the mentors and mentees are flexible to discuss other topics too. In fact, discussions have covered module selection and in-person examination. To support these face-to-face sessions, staff have often booked meeting spaces and helped with the organisation. Feedback and comments on both peer and industrial mentoring sessions have been very positive with evidence of students considering them to be ‘safe space’ for difficult conversations (Table 3). Three industrial mentoring sessions supported by AFBE-UK are delivered online (2 sessions) and face-to-face (one session). The industrial mentors provide career insights, highlighting opportunities with advice on navigating challenges. During the face-to-face session, students receive feedback on their CVs and presentation skills and engage with the mentors for mock interviews. Additionally, longer term support can be provided by the industrial mentors with ementoring. Students have been provided opportunities to attend external engineering events and conference. The exposure to motivational talks and industrial networking through these events have been very well received by all students who attended. Table 3. Selected students’ comments/feedback Peer mentoring Industrial mentoring External event ‘Being a first-generation university attendee, you are not given some kind of manual/handbook on how to study at this level, how to make friends in this new environment or how to build relationships with the teaching staff. I just had to work it out, but it enabled me to learn more about myself.’ ‘Received very good feedback regarding interview skills, CV writing and presentation.’ ‘The keynote talk was very motivating but can be shorter.’ ‘The discussions and presentations were truly invaluable and left me with so much inspiration.’ ‘It was good to see representatives from various industries and other sectors and hear about what they have done.’ 4 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS The ECMP is an example of a successful mentoring program for disadvantaged undergraduate engineering students from underrepresented groups and low socioeconomic backgrounds. It is an example of staff-student partnership which embeds students’ voice throughout the programme. Student programme leads and mentors get opportunities to develop their leadership and mentoring skills. The programme effectively integrates peer and industrial mentoring, with the scope of embedding academic mentoring going forward. Based on students’ feedback, the mentoring programme has enabled students to enhance their professional networks, within their peer group and externally. Students have acknowledged receiving effective professional guidance from industrial mentors related to CV writing, mock interviews, upskilling and securing internships. The scale of the programme sometimes makes its organisation logistically challenging, affecting the attendance of students to all the sessions and events. Additionally, meeting expectations of students from different year groups and engineering disciplines can be difficult. Some of these challenges may be potentially overcome by placing students in smaller groups according to their year of study or engineering discipline.