UMass Boston Launches Connected Futures, a Systemwide Peer Mentoring Initiative
Three-year, public-private project will pair incoming students across four UMass campuses with a trained peer mentor, supported by human-centered AI and a randomized controlled trial.
The Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring at the University of Massachusetts Boston announced Connected Futures, a three-year initiative that will bring proactive, relationship-centered peer mentoring to community college transfer students and first-year students across UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth, and UMass Lowell. Beginning this fall 2026 and running through August 2029, the project is projected to reach approximately 15,000 students, with priority given to first-generation, Pell-eligible, and racially and ethnically minority students.
Connected Futures is supported by a coordinated grant package from Axim Collaborative and an anonymous foundation. Alongside the grant funding, the University of Massachusetts President’s Office is contributing funding, with in-kind support from the participating universities.
The initiative responds to a persistent challenge in American higher education. Too many students leave college not because of academic inability but because they lack the relationships and navigational guidance that help them navigate and feel connected. With MassEducate making community college free statewide and transfer enrollment climbing, the risk of preventable attrition at the receiving end has never been higher.
“Connected Futures is about making sure that every student who arrives at a UMass campus has someone in their corner from day one,” said Jean E. Rhodes, Frank L. Boyden Professor of Psychology at UMass Boston and Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring. “The research is unambiguous. Students who feel connected to trained and knowledgeable peer mentors stay enrolled, earn more credits, and thrive.”
In Year One, beginning fall 2026, over 1,000 community college transfer students across the four campuses will be paired with a trained peer mentor who reaches out before the student arrives, conducts regular check-ins across academic, financial, social, and well-being domains, and connects students to advising, tutoring, financial aid, counseling, and career services as needs emerge. In Year Two, beginning fall 2027, the model expands to the full incoming first-year class across all four campuses, while continuing to support the Year One transfer cohort.
Peer mentors will be supported by MentorPRO, a research-grounded platform now used by more than 90 institutional programs and partners, including West Point, the University of Chicago, Salem State, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Building on a pilot funded by the Axim Collaborative, Connected Futures will also conduct rigorous, ethically guided A/B testing of AI features designed to reduce administrative burden on mentors so they can focus their time on the relationship itself. A formal governance structure will oversee data privacy, algorithmic bias monitoring, and alignment with each campus’s AI policies.
Connected Futures is designed as a randomized controlled trial across the four campuses, with primary outcomes including one-year and two-year retention, cumulative GPA, credits earned, sense of belonging, help-seeking behaviors, and networking self-efficacy.
The project aligns with the UMass system’s highest priorities. President Marty Meehan has directed the university to strengthen its commitment to community college transfer students and launched the Community College Advantage Scholarship to reduce financial barriers. Platform licensing, campus coordinator positions, and mentor stipends are all structured to transition into ongoing campus support by the end of the grant, ensuring that peer mentoring becomes a permanent feature of student success infrastructure across the UMass system.
“Technology serves the relationship. It never replaces it,” Rhodes said. “That is the promise of Connected Futures.”
About the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring
Founded in 2012 at the University of Massachusetts Boston, the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring advances mentoring research and translates findings into practice. Under the direction of Jean E. Rhodes, the Center has produced more than 200 peer-reviewed publications on mentoring, social capital, and youth development and reaches a large practitioner audience through the Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring.
