Undergraduate Curricular Peer Mentoring Programs

Whether or not a college currently offers a Supplemental Instruction program, uses peer leaders in First-year Learning Community, or assigns Peer Tutors to courses, Undergraduate Peer MentoringPrograms will provide educators with concepts, examples, and findings useful for program development, innovation and enhancement. Contributors describe an international and interdisciplinary set of programs from the perspectives of program administrators, instructors, students and teaching assistants, while the editor reviews four decades of research, incorporating examples into theory and practice sections.

Tania Smith is assistant professor of communications studies in the Department of Communication and Culture and has been involved in developing peer mentoring programs, hosting peer mentors, and teaching peer mentors across the University of Calgary since 2005. With a background in English literature, rhetoric and writing studies, she has studied innovative program and course development involving service-learning, mentoring and other forms of collaborative learning. She has co-authored with two senior peer mentors a textbook titled Curricular Peer Mentoring: A Handbook for Undergraduate Peer Mentors Serving and Learning in Courses (Trafford, 2009) and is author of a 2008 Innovative Higher Education article on the pilot year of the arts peer mentoring program.

Introduction: The History and Scope of Curricular Peer Mentoring Programs Tania S. Smith Chapter 1: Defining Features of Curricular Peer Mentoring Programs Tania S. Smith Chapter 2: Discipline-Focused Peer Mentoring: Peer Teaching in Biology at the University of British Columbia Carol Pollock Theory and Practice: Lave and Wenger on Communities of Practice Tania S. Smith Chapter 3: Peer Mentoring in a Team-Taught Interdisciplinary Course: Engaging the 21st Century Student Through Peer-Led Learning Tina Pugliese, Tamsin Bolton, Veronika Mogyorody, Jill Singleton-Jackson, Robert Nelson & Ralph H. Johnson Theory and Practice: Student Engagement Tania S. Smith Chapter 4: Peer Mentoring in Large-scale First-year Programs: Academic Peer Mentors in First-year Courses at the University of Texas at Austin Jennifer L. Smith Theory and Practice: Tinto and Wenger on Learning Communities Tania S. Smith Chapter 5: Peer Mentoring in a Technical Institution: Undergraduate Mentoring in Software Engineering Sanjay Goel Theory and Practice: Vygotsky's and Bloom's Theories Tania S. Smith Chapter 6: Hosting Peer Mentors in a Senior Interdisciplinary Course: Notes from a Pre-History of Peer Mentoring at the University of Calgary Marcia Jenneth Epstein Theory and Practice: Bruffee on Collaborative Learning Tania S. Smith Chapter 7: Supporting Peer Mentors: Recruiting, Educating and Rewarding Peer Mentors Kate Zier-Vogel and Andrew Barry Theory and Practice: Peer Mentor Education Through Service-Learning Tania S. Smith Chapter 8: Case Studies of Conflict and Collaboration: Supporting Teaching Assistants Who Work with Peer Mentors Bryanne Young Theory and Practice: Teaching Teams with Graduate and Undergraduate Assistants Tania S. Smith Conclusion: Program Development and Sustainability Tania S. Smith