Multicultural Student Mentor Program (MSMP)

Institution
Washington State University
State
Washington
Academic Level
Baccalaureate
Issue Area
Retention
Key Personnel
Program Focus
First Year Support,
Mentoring

Overview

The primary goal of the Multicultural Student Mentor Program (MSMP) is to assist the growing number of multicultural first-year students with their academic and social transition to college. This program strives to promote and facilitate student interaction and provides opportunities for peer mentors and mentees to connect and form strong academic relationships to foster success in their college experience.

Program Description

To help integrate first-year multicultural college students into the college environment, the Office of Minority Affairs established MSMP in 1988 as a retention strategy to welcome and help incoming students in their transition and adjustment to the university environment. MSMP focuses on improving multicultural student retention rates by providing mentoring, tutoring, and academic success workshops to students. This program has been helpful for both the students and the institution. The program provides mentors with excellent leadership experience, and mentees with a strong peer connection while increasing the university’s retention rates. Over the last 30 years, the program has become one of the most solid university retention strategies for multicultural students and one of the best practices of students serving students. The program has also experienced significant growth in the number of mentors from their initial 6 to now 60. The support, training, and guidance of the mentors has also evolved greatly with the establishment of training retreats and a class dedicated to learning mentoring theory and praxis. Each academic year, over 1300 first-year multicultural students participate as mentees in this program and a university commitment to the program has increased over the years.

Outcome

The fall-to-fall retention rate for the 2015 cohort was 76.9%. 

The fall-to-fall retention rate for the 2016 cohort was 84.4%

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