January 28, 2025
Rural Community College Mentees Wanted!
This is the third phase of a three-phase study. A description of the prior phases and what we learned can be found in our Data Note 2 for this project. We are gathering a nationwide sample, surveying students who are or have experienced mentoring at rural-serving institutions to learn about potential differences and commonalities in the needs, barriers, and mentoring best-practices they identify. Each respondent will receive $10 in the form of a gift card of their choice, and will be entered to win an Apple iPad. Respondents can also be someone who has left their community college but experienced mentoring there in the recent past.
Our three-phase study, Mapping Effective Mentorship for Rural Community College Students, seeks to provide a comprehensive assessment of the descriptions of mentoring programs at rural-serving community colleges in the United States, to understand these programs from the mentor and mentee perspective, to find practices that are especially responsive to students at these institutions, and to highlight and begin a dialogue with practitioners regarding how these practices can be applied and expanded in other mentoring programs.
Students at rural-serving community colleges often face greater systemic inequities, but extant mentoring models were not devised with this population in mind. Thus, we were particularly interested in programs that took these systematic factors into account, and that supported students to navigate and advocate for themselves within these contexts.
The 15-minute survey asks about these and other mentoring supports, what could be improved, and what impact the students felt their mentoring experiences had on their academic and career plans. Respondents who have recently departed community college are invited to share their retrospective experiences. Each respondent will receive $10 in the form of a gift card which they will choose from 100+ options via the Tango card system. Respondents who opt in will also be entered in a drawing to win an Apple iPad.
One reason mentoring for students at rural-serving community colleges is under-examined and underdeveloped is the inherent difficulty in directly collecting representative nationwide data with these students. Outreach through practitioners and institutional stakeholders is especially critical for this research. Thus, if you work with or are connected to someone who mentors these students, please pass the information about this survey along.
The leaderboard tracking the states from which the survey has thus far received the most responses, as well as a brief explanation of the survey, including a flyer for dissemination, can be found on our website here. Thank you for your help in uncovering the best ways to support rural community college students!