Peer Mentorship Program Benefits All Involved

When Maricela Cantuna ‘23OD and Sana Fasihudden ‘23OD arrived at Salus University, they were looking for a little guidance, which they found in the form of the University’s Peer Mentoring program. 

The purpose of the program is for second-year students to help first-year students become acclimated to the Optometry, Audiology and Occupational Therapy programs (the Physician Assistant Studies and Speech-Language Pathology programs have their own, separate peer programs). 

Cantuna and Fasihudden had such a good experience being “mentees” in the program during their first year that the following year, they both decided to give something back to the program and become “mentors.” 

“I like to help other people, that’s one of the main reasons I became a mentor,” said Cantuna. “I had some trouble adjusting during my first semester, so I wanted to share my experience with other students and be there for them.” 

Fasihudden, who has been involved in leadership activities at school in the past, agreed. “I wanted to do something where I could help people. I started doing this last year and my mentor would help me a lot. They had a lot of fun events and it helped me de-stress,” she said.

The program is really about helping first-year students acclimate, and having their own personal resource in the mentor they are assigned, according to Monae Kelsey, MS, associate director of Student Engagement and assistant director of Admissions. Kelsey and counselor Tami April-Davis, PsyD are co-coordinators of the peer mentoring program.

“The mentors are trained and knowledgeable on how to be good mentors. They also are able to show the first-years the resources that are available to them as they are going along throughout that first year,” said Kelsey. 

The mentors are not tutors, they are not teaching assistants and they are not personal counselors. In addition, they are not expected to be any of those things. However, that doesn’t prevent the mentors and mentees from studying together, for example. 

All mentors, who can have more than one mentee, but usually no more than two, are trained at the beginning of the program so they know the appropriate boundaries and understand what it is to be a mentor. Mentors’ training is a two-hour required session offered prior to being paired or being launched for the year. Currently there are 125 mentees and 84 mentors in the program. 

Helping the mentees finding a sense of belonging within the institution as well as the social perimeters of the University are key components of the program.

Mentors and mentees are paired within their respective programs — Optometry students with Optometry students — for example. However, during group social events, the three programs can interact if they choose.

During the pre-pandemic days, the group would try to schedule monthly social events, starting with a meet-and-greet at the beginning of the fall semester, where the two groups would discuss how they would be engaging with each other.

“The only real requirement is that they connect for at least one hour a month. However, it is up to them how they engage,” said Kelsey. “They can be friends on social media, they can text, they can call, and they can come together in person. We encourage the in-person engagement by having these social programs.”

This year’s meet-and-greet limited the social interaction because of the pandemic, but did encourage mentors and mentees to meet face-to-face if they were comfortable by offering gift cards to a local ice cream shop.

The social aspects of the program have proven to make sense for both the psychological and emotional well-being of the students, especially during the pandemic. Undoubtedly, the pandemic has created additional pressures on the students who already had a heavy course load. In the past, these social events have included activities such as painting, massages, yoga classes and recently, pumpkin painting.

“Mindfulness and relaxation are front-line treatment interventions — evidence-based practice — for stress and anxiety. Massage and yoga events that have been offered to our mentoring pairs, falls under the umbrella of mindfulness,” said April-Davis. “The other thing that we know is that social support moderates the relationship between stress and well-being. The better our social connections are — quality, not necessarily quantity — the less of a negative impact that stress has on our overall well-being.”

Although the mentors are supporting the mentees a lot in the beginning and connecting them, April-Davis said, eventually the mentees will have their own connections and their own circles and they can introduce their mentors into those networking circles.

In addition to the initial meeting at the ice cream shop, the group has been able to have one other face-to-face event this semester where they painted and decorated pumpkins around Halloween.

Being in the program as a first-year student and experiencing how beneficial it is has encouraged many return as mentors the following year because they can see the program’s benefits from both sides.

“When we first started, we were all struggling. We all thought that we were alone and that we were the only people feeling that way,” said Fasihudden. “But now that we have mentees, we notice that other people feel exactly the same way. You become close to them. And, they’re very similar to us.”