Author(s):
In this talk, we investigate the effect of participating as a near-peer mentor for computing activities in undergraduate courses across disciplines. Many studies on near-peer mentorship have demonstrated academic and professional growth—as well as anincrease in self-efficacy—of mentees. In this talk (which is part of a larger research program), we focus on how participation as a mentor in an undergraduate Computing Fellows program contributes to the strengthening and expansion of the mentors’ computing identity through their interactions in the program, including via investigation of the mutual benefits of the program on mentees and mentors. The Computing Fellows program “attaches” near-peer mentors to undergraduate courses across the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts. The mentors support the integration of computing into courses through activities including in-class workshops and drop-in office hours. In a mixed-methods study, we conducted semi-structured interviews over two years with mentors (all of whom identify as women) after their participation and we cross-reference the results with course evaluation data. We find that fellows’ experience in the program, both as near-peer mentors and through their engagement in critical discussions about computing and computing pedagogy as part of their training, expands and deepens their computing identity and the various ways they can engage with computing in their lives in and beyond college.This is joint work with co-PI Jennifer Rosales, Elizabeth Melville, Melissa Wright, and Saima Akhtar.
