Crimson and Gold Connection; Heather Eckstein

Heather, thanks for joining us. What's your favorite part about what you do? I really enjoy working with the individual students. It's great to watch a student walk on campus for the first time, for their first day of classes, and watch how they grow throughout that process. I enjoy that the most. What are some of the challenges that you face within your job? One of the challenges is assisting students in understanding that university life is a job that college becomes their job, and there will be challenged. Everything will not come easily to them, and helping students make that successful transition, that is one of the biggest challenges we have. But we have a team of people who are doing it, so we have other freshman experience instructors, our student success counselor, Ashley, who also works in student success programs, and of course, the peer mentors. That is one of the things that they are primarily responsible for assisting us with, helping those students successfully navigate Pittsburgh State University and make a successful transition from high school life to university life. And you are here to visit with us today about the Pitt encouragement and educational resource specialist

program. Can you tell us a little bit about this group? The Pierce program is in place so that we have students who have successfully transitioned to Pittsburgh State and are now especially trained to help new students do the same. So, a student is identified in their freshman year, first semester, by either a current freshman experience instructor or by their peer mentor in their freshman experience class. They have to be nominated and then they have to apply. It is a very select process. We had about 60 actual applications out of 120 nominations this year, and we were able only to accept 18 of those because that's the number of positions we had available. So, the students are carefully screened to make sure that they are capable of handling this academically. I never want a program that we have to negatively affect a student who's participating in that program academically. So, we look at their academics. They also have an essay they have to complete. And so, we learn a little bit about them through that essay process and about what they think about peer mentoring.

And then we select from the group of applicants using that information. You did mention you had 18 available spots this semester. Is that the entirety of the group or are there more students that are allowed to do it for more than a year's time? We will allow a peer mentor to continue as long as they wish to while they're here at PSU once they've been accepted into the program officially. The 18 students who we just accepted are peers in training. And so, once they successfully complete the course that they're currently enrolled in for this program, then they will be assigned as peer mentors in the fall. There are several students who are continuing peers for next semester. We hope to have about 36 total peer mentors. In regards to the training course that these peer mentors have to take, what does that focus on? First, we focus on knowing Pittsburgh State. You have to know Pittsburgh State pretty well. I always tell the students you're going to learn more than you thought there was to know about the university and about the resources available to assist students. So, that's one of the things. But we're also going to talk about the differences between high school and college and how that can affect people differently.

So, some students come to Pittsburgh State for the first time and they are moving out of their parents' house and into our residence halls. That can be a very big transition. But all students also transition into college life and it's very different from high school where they may have had a schedule that began at 8 in the morning, ended at 3 and they were in class all day. And we know that in university that is not how the course schedule works. So, that's another big transition. The social life is different and where socialization occurs and how that occurs is different. There's lots of things, how we get engaged on campus and how we help students to get engaged on campus. Those are all things that we discuss. We also discuss who they are. They need to understand who they are and really think about who they are so that they can work with students who are very different from them as well as those who may be similar. So, we have some self-awareness as well. How long has peers been a group on campus and how did it become about? The first peer mentor training program began in the spring of 2009. We had looked at what other universities were doing to help their students be successful in their first year at their universities and we found out a best practice is peer mentoring.

So, we established a program through the Student Success Office and had those first nine peer mentors in place in the fall of 2009. So, that was when we began and we started with only nine. Our goal has always been to have a peer mentor in every freshman experience class. So, we have worked to increase that number to where we are now at about 36. Why is it important to have a group like this on campus? Well, to help with retention, quite honestly, you know, a student can come to me or any faculty or staff member on campus for assistance. But often they really want to hear from other students and that is one of the best resources we can give them. A student who has already figured this out in many ways has been successful as a freshman and can pass along that good advice about how they can transition successfully, how they can overcome challenges. Talking about the mentors in the peers group, what are some of the benefits that you see out of them as the semester goes forward and as they progress as leaders? For the mentors, this is really a win-win situation for PSU because our students who are getting the mentoring, who are new students, who have a student they can go to, who has experience, they benefit a lot just from that knowledge and that experience.

The mentors, they benefit as well. And we knew this would happen, like I knew as we created the program, students would benefit from being in the mentor program. But I guess I wasn't really sure how much until I started asking them specifically some of the things that they tell me one communication skills. They learn a lot about how to communicate effectively to groups, to large groups, to small groups, and to individuals. They learn how to work with a diverse population of students. So that's very beneficial as they go out into the workplace where they'll have similar situations they'll have to deal with. So communication is one of those keys. Confidence as well. Confidence is one of the things they list. When they tell me what's benefited them, they feel more confident because they have the experience and the knowledge and they know how to provide that information successfully to whoever they're mentoring. And they tell me they do that with their friends too. So once they have this information, it's not just limited to sharing that with the 30 or so students who are in their freshman experience class, that fall semester. They can also share it more broadly with the student organizations they're involved in. They become better leaders in their organizations and on campus in general because of that information.

I've also had several graduates who said in their interviews that because that mentoring program is listed as one of their activities, it is almost always a question that they are asked at their job interviews, at their interviews to graduate school. And the interviewer is always very interested in that and the students felt that that was one of the reasons they would be selected for those positions or for graduate school acceptance. Finally, what would you just like to say in your own words about the individuals in this group? The peers, the students who are doing this are volunteers. They are willing to take an extra class and to spend a lot of time, particularly in the fall semester. And beyond that, working with students who are new to Pittsburgh State, they are amazing. And I tell them this, but I'm not sure that they understand just how helpful they are to students. When you receive help, you don't always say thank you. I tell the peers, now that you have done this, I'm saying thank you to you, but I want you to know that that comes from those students too that you've helped though, they might say it. As often, they really, on an individual basis, help so many students find their path here. And that is so beneficial to the university as well as to the individual students.

So it's an amazing group.