BOOKS

DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE STUDENT PEER MENTORING PROGRAMS:
A Practitioner's Guide to Program Design, Delivery, Evaluation and Training.

Collier, Peter J.
Stylus Press - Sterling, VA
October 2015
368 pp., 9 figures & 6 tables

At a time when college completion is a major issue, and there is particular concern about the retention of underserved student populations, peer mentoring programs offer one solution to promoting student success.

This is a comprehensive resource for creating, refining and sustaining effective student peer mentoring programs. While providing a blueprint for successfully designing programs for a wide range of audiences – from freshmen to doctoral students – it also offers specific guidance on developing programs targeting three large groups of under-served students: first-generation students, international students and student veterans.

This guidebook is divided into two sections. The four chapters that make up Section One, "What is peer mentoring and why does it work to promote student success?" provide background on peer mentoring, the issue of college degree non-completion, models of traditional and non-traditional college persistence, differences in transitions into higher education, student adjustment issues, and matching student issues to what peer mentoring can realistically accomplish.

The six chapters in Section Two, "The nuts and bolts of developing a college student peer mentoring program," provide practical information and direction on program design, delivery, content, mentoring training, evaluation and institutionalizing your program. In addition, you will also find sets of resources at the end of each chapter in Section Two including examples of key program documents, a mentor-training curriculum, and evaluation materials.

There are two particularly distinctive features of this book. First, this guide explicitly discusses multiple ways that program size decisions will impact the development and implementation of your peer-mentoring program. Second, a series of case studies of successful programs of different sizes has been included to illustrate best practices in the key areas of design, delivery, evaluation, and training.

This book is primarily intended as a resource for student affairs professionals and program coordinators who are developing new peer-mentoring programs or considering refining existing ones. It may also serve as a text in courses designed to train future peer mentors and leaders.

- from "introduction" Developing Effective Student Peer Mentoring Programs: A Practitioner's Guide to Program Design, Delivery, Evaluation and Training

What Others Are Saying

"I consider this mentoring handbook as a vital tool for any institution that is looking to establish a peer-mentoring program, and recommend its use to those who have already implemented programs in their search to improve on their model, and thus the program’s overall effectiveness. I believe that by explicitly defining and demonstrating all of the multifaceted aspects involved in creating a mentoring program, and by addressing the best strategies to approach this subject, Developing Effective Student Peer Mentoring Programs is a must read for anyone interested in implementing a peer mentoring program on their college campus."
Nora Dominquez, University of New Mexico
President of the International Mentoring Association
Director, UNM Mentoring Institute

"Collier’s treatment of peer mentorship is THE resource you want on this topic. It is grounded in theory and scholarship but also provides practical advice and institutional examples of peer mentor programs. It is comprehensive in its coverage of the history and purpose of these programs and also addresses the important elements of successful program delivery such as recruitment, training, and evaluation. Further, it is inclusive of peer mentoring for “new-traditional” student populations such as international, service members and veteran, and first-generation undergraduates."
Jennifer R. Keup,
Director, National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition

[This] is a self-directed guide for college students engaged in service-learning. The purpose of the book is to walk the reader through elements of learning and serving by focusing on how students can 'best provide meaningful service to a community agency or organization while simultaneously gaining new skills, knowledge, and understanding as an integrated aspect of the [student's] academic program.' [The authors] bring their expertise to the pages of this helpful and practical guide for college students engaged in service-learning. Intended as a textbook, this work reads like a conversation between the authors and the college student learner. The publication is student-friendly, comprehensive, easy-to-follow, and full of helpful activities."
- Journal of College Student Development

“This substantially expanded new edition of this widely-used and acclaimed text maintains the objectives and tenets of the first... This edition presents four new chapters on Mentoring, Leadership, Becoming a Change Agent, and Short-Term Immersive and Global Service-Learning Experiences. The authors have also revised the original chapters to more fully address issues of social justice, privilege/power, diversity, intercultural communication, and technology; have added more disciplinary examples; incorporated additional academic content for understanding service-learning issues (e.g., attribution theory); and cover issues related to students with disabilities, and international students.”
- Amazon