Family and friends were the most important sources of support for these nontraditional women. Based on the interview responses, the help they received from their families, along with the friendships they developed through the mentoring program, offered the social supports needed to provide safe child care and maintain a stable home environment for the women and their
families. The women needed to know that the person watching their children would take excellent care of the children or they would not be able to focus in school. In addition, having at least one supportive family member provided the encouragement needed for continuing their studies.
When asked about other supports in question 5.1, all five women mentioned family and friends first, but only three mentioned faculty, counseling, and academic tutoring as another support system. College representatives need to explain the other programs which can provide a variety supports for women students such as academic tutoring, counseling services, new student orientation, mentoring and financial aid to all students including the nontraditional women participating in the program. All community college staff must be trained in the various support departments and services available to students.
When they first entered college, these nontraditional women were not comfortable with the environment. They felt intimidated and out of place with the younger students in class and their own children at home. Adapting to the unfamiliar surroundings of college is often very difficult, and the question, “how do I fit”, and “do I fit”, into the college environment can take over academic expectations for a new student. They experienced the conflicts associated with integration discussed by Tinto (1993) and explored self-knowledge as described by Neisser (1988).
Neisser (1988) explains that self-knowledge is based on different forms of information. Each form is so distinct it establishes a different self as perceived with respect to the immediate physical environment; the interpersonal self is based on signals of rapport and communication; the extended self is based on memory; the private self appears when we discover our conscious experiences are our own; and the conceptual self draws its meaning from a network of socially-
bases assumptions about human nature. So when a situation is new or extremely different from what we confronted in the past we do not know how to react to the circumstances using the mechanisms we adopted earlier. A lack of self-knowledge that does not lead to growth in the first year of college can lead to college failure and dropout. The complexity of the women’s multiple roles as parent, mother, and breadwinner and college student add to the types of self-knowledge that must be maintained, and can be overwhelming. As they learned about and began to experience the support they received through the mentor program, they decided to stay in college.
5.1.2 Mentoring
All the women acknowledged the importance of the college’s offering a mentor program for nontraditional women. They all stated that the program should exist to ensure that college social and academic programs would be fully accessible to them. All believe that the mentor program should be expanded to include other women who need help to complete their degrees.
Student responses support the findings of the ASHE Higher Education Report on Mentoring Undergraduate Students (Crist, et.al.) with regard to the both the short-term and long- term benefits of mentoring: academic performance increased (citing Brittian, Sy and Stokes, 2009, Dahlvig, 2010), the students persisted and attained degrees (citing Espinoza & Espinoza, 2012; Gross, Iverson, Willette & Manduca, 2015), and satisfactory career and personal development (citing Kinkel, 2011).
Because the term mentor has numerous definitions in the literature, the word has not been easy to define with precision. To avoid tarnishing the subjects’ responses, the author did not define the term for the subjects prior to administering the study questionnaire; each woman had
to provide her own definition of “mentor” in her own words. The author then provided the definition adopted for the study after each woman completed her interviews. In general, the subjects’ definitions were similar to the definition used for the study.
For this study, the definition of mentor is an individual who has been identified as an influential and important person in the educational journey of a college student. This traditional one-to-one mentoring model, referred to as the “dyad”, is defined by Moore and Salimbene (1981) as an “intense lasting and professionally centered relationship between two individuals.” The two participants are usually designated the mentor and the mentee. The mentor is the source of benefits and has greater power and responsibility than the mentee, who is the receiver of benefits.
The more opportunities that the women had to interact with each other within the program, the more they were inspired to cooperate, share, and help each other. More verbal communication leads to more opportunity to engage in norms of fairness in behavior and grading (Frey & Bohnet, 1995). Although the primary mentoring relationship existed between the college mentor and the individual mentee, the students also engaged in supporting each other individually and within the group. The interview results revealed that the women in the mentor program formed a special bond to support each other. They set up support systems within the group to encourage and help each other during their academic journeys. “We kept in touch with each other. Someone in our group could always find another woman from the group to share ideas.” In a sense, they became mentors for each other.