Presenter: Cheyenne Lawrence
Authors: Cheyenne Lawrence
Faculty Advisor: Joshua Price
Institution: Southern Utah University
Peer mentoring has become a prevalent and accessible tool used to combat dropout rates in education. Past research has shown a positive impact on students’ success rates associated with peer support groups. However, little research has been done to identify what characteristics aid in the success of these groups. For example, race is a characteristic often used to identify similarities between different individuals. This research tries to analyze the impact that participants’ race in peer support groups has on the outcome of the individuals within the group. Additionally, recent data collected byDr. Jenna Kramer showed that black participants were negatively affected by peer mentor groups when she analyzed the effectiveness of peer mentoring in the completion of a scholarship application program. This paper tries to identify the cause of the negative outcome by analyzing the difference in the peer mentor groups by race. First, we consider how being in a group of the same race compares to being in a group of members of mixed races. Second, we consider how increasing the number of participants of the same race affects the success rate of participants of that race. The results are expected to show that increasing the number of participants of the same race will lead to significantly better outcomes for that race.