Mentoring expands across three UMass Boston colleges.
UMass Boston CLA FirstBoston, Massachusetts
More than 400 incoming and transfer students served. The partnership began with one learning community in the College of Liberal Arts and spread to the College of Management and the Manning College of Nursing and Health Sciences.
UMass Boston Connected FuturesBoston, Massachusetts
Peer mentoring for first-generation and transfer students, built on the platform where the research began.
Connected Futures pairs incoming students with trained peer mentors who use goal setting, weekly check-ins, and secure messaging on MentorPRO. Program staff follow every match from a supervision dashboard and step in when a check-in signals trouble. The model is now being extended to additional campuses.
Engagement is through the roof compared to what we looked like last year. MentorPRO has become the linchpin of those connections.
First-year retention moved from 76 percent to 82 percent after adopting goal-directed mentoring.
Salem State adopted MentorPRO alongside an intentional shift toward goal-directed peer mentoring. Program leaders report that first-year retention, which had averaged 76 percent, reached 82 percent in the first year of the new model. Retention is associated with many factors, and these figures are the program's own reporting.
Our first-year retention had been averaging 76 percent. This year, using MentorPRO and adopting intentional goal-directed mentoring, we retained 82 percent.
UMass Boston Connected FuturesBoston, Massachusetts