Altering the Commuter Students College Experience Through Mentoring

Abstract

Commuter students when compared to resident students are less involved on campus, lack a sense of campus community, and are less open to forming new friendships. I will be exploring the effects mentoring has on commuter students’ college experience. I believe that commuters who receive mentoring will become more involved on campus than non-mentored commuters and mentored commuters will become more open to new friendships than non-mentored commuters leading to an increased sense of community. I believe mentored commuters will show greater academic success than non-mentored commuters as well. We surveyed 175 students including commuter and resident students. As in previous studies, commuter students expressed less openness to new friendships than residents. Fifty students from this sample are currently receiving mentoring for six weeks as part of a general education class. We will re-survey the students after the 6 weeks to determine whether the students who received mentoring experienced changes in our variables of interest. Another group of fifty students will then receive mentoring prior to a final survey. We hypothesize that mentoring will be most helpful to students, like commuters, who are at risk of feeling alienated from campus life. I believe that, with the help of mentoring, commuter students will gain more of a sense of community on campus leading them to being more involved and more open to new friendships.