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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

MENTORING THE LEADER:
THE ROLE OF PEER MENTORING
IN THE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT OF
STUDENTS-OF-COLOR IN HIGHER EDUCATION

presented by

CONNIE ROSE TINGSON-GATUZ

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

PhD. degree in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong
Education Program

 

 

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TITLE: MENTORING THE LEADER:
THE ROLE OF PEER MENTORING IN THE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
OF STUDENTS-OF—COLOR IN HIGHER EDUCATION
By

Connie Rose Tingson-Gatuz

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education Program

2009

(D

ABSTRACT
By

Connie Rose Tingson-Gatuz

The racial and ethnic demographic landscape of American society and
postsecondary education is changing at an accelerated rate whereby people-of-color are
becoming the numerical majority. Yet, little is known about the response to these changes
particularly in the area of leadership. There is rrrinimal evidence to suggest that members
of racial and ethnic groups are assuming leadership roles in similar proportions to their
population growth in society or in college. The intent of this study is to explore the ways
in which peer mentoring contributes to how students-of-color develop as leaders.

Using a qualitative design, this research examined seventeen students’
experiences with peer mentoring and leadership development through semi-structured
individual interviews and drawings of their experiences. The study was conducted at a
large research institution located in the Midwest. Purposeful selection was applied to
select students—of—color serving as a student leader of an ALAN A (African American,
Latino, Asian Pacific American, and/or Native American) student organization on
campus.

Three themes emerged from data: Defining, Positioning, and Generativity. Peer
mentors are defined in personal and organizational contexts. The setting and timing of
interaction between peer mentors and participants affects the degree of their involvement
in leadership. Leadership succession was evident among participants as a result of

encouragement from their peer mentors. Connections between this study and theoretical

models from three other research were identified including Kram’s (1988)
Developmental Relationships Model, Komives (2007) Generativity Model, and
Sedlacek’s (2004) Non-Cognitive Variable Model. Conclusions are drawn to provide
insight on the benefits and outcomes of peer mentor models for students, student-led
organizations, and for institutions. Recommendations are made through which
institutions can utilize this information to enhance peer mentoring opportunities that

increase leadership capacity among students-of-color.

To all of those who have been transformed by mentorship and leadership

so that they may “inspire forward.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Gratitude is the memory of the heart” — Jean Baptiste Massieu

As a first generation, Filipina American woman, I am overwhelmed with gratitude
to all of the special people who have deposited so much into my mind and spirit. I feel
immense gratitude for Dr. Marilyn J. Amey who guided me through this journey. My
appreciation also extends to my dissertation committee Dr. Lee June, Dr. John Dirkx, Dr.
Kris Renn, and Dr. Matthew Wawrzynski.

Heartfelt thanks to all of those who have supported me in meaningful ways:
God, my Creator and Teacher; Ryan Gatuz, my loving husband who inspired me to
persist; Pete and Terry Tingson, my incredible parents who have showered me with
unconditional love throughout my life; the Gatuz family- Ma Fe, Romeo, Jun, Marife,
and Zenkerr David; the Buison and Tingson families both in the US. and the Philippines;
My deceased grandparents Juan Buison, Remedios Buison, Pedro Tingson and Consuelo
Tingson who paved the way; and My relatives who consistently provided great care
during challenging times; Maggie Chen Hernandez, my soul sister who shared in so many
ways; Connie Sanchez Duling, my Tocaya who gave me a home away from home. Pam
McFadden, my dear friend who listened with great care; Tommy Scott, my mentee who
. has taught me so much; and Brenda Maynard who enriched my spirit.

To all those who have shaped my perspectives and enriched my life:
Dr. Ralph Bonner; Senator Jackie Vaughn (deceased); Michigan State, University of

Michigan, and Madonna University families; and my lifelong friends.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................. viii

LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................. ix

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 1

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................... 7
Peer Mentoring and Leadership Development ......................................... 11
Multicultural Peer Mentoring ............................................................ 13
The Developmental Relationship Model ................................................ 15

Role of Mentoring: Peer Relationships and Mentor Relationships... . . . . . . . . . 15
Phases of a Mentor Relationship: Initiation, Cultivation, Separation

and Redefinition ............................................................................. 19
Using the Developmental Relationship Model to Examine the Role of
Peer Mentoring .............................................................................. 20
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY ............................................................................. 22
Participant Involvement and Demographics ............................................ 23
Data Collection ............................................................................. 24
Data Management .......................................................................... 27
Analysis ...................................................................................... 27
Role of the Researcher ...................................................................... 28
Assumptions and Limitations ............................................................. 29
CHAPTER 4
FINDINGS ....................................................................................... 31
Theme 1: Defining .......................................................................... 31
Peer Mentor Characteristics .................................................. 32
Sharing Between Peer Mentors and their Mentees ...................... 35
Peer Support Providing Personal Support and Prompting
Self-Exploration ............................................................... 40
Peer Support for Organizational Change ................................... 44
Peer Efforts to Respond to Organizational and Political Crises. . . . 46
Theme 2: Positioning ...................................................................... 51
Early Interactions Stimulate Immediate Involvement in the
Community .................................................................... 53

Early Interactions Stimulate Involvement During the Latter

vi

Portion of their College Careers ............................................ 57
Formal (Institutionally-Devised) Peer Encouragement to

Become Actively Involved in the Community ........................... 58
Informal (Student Initiated) Peer Encouragement to Become
Involved in the Community .................................................. 61
Assuming Increasing Levels of Responsibility Within their
Identified Racial and Ethnic Community .................................. 62
Influenced by Visible Leadership Roles of Their Peers ................. 65
Theme 3: Generativity ..................................................................... 68
Former Leaders Mentoring Current Leaders: Acquisition of
Knowledge and Insight ...................................................... 69
Current Positional Leaders Mentoring Emerging Leaders:
Passage of Knowledge and Insight ......................................... 73
Current Positional Leaders Mentoring Current Positional
Leaders .......................................................................... 76
Evolution of Leadership Regeneration .................................... 78
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS .................................................... 80
Benefits and Outcomes .................................................................... 86
Limitations ................................................................................... 91
Implications for Practice .................................................................. 91
Future Research ............................................................................. 94
APPENDICES ................................................................................... 98
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................... 123

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Developmental Functions: Comparison of Mentor Relationships
versus Peer Relationships

viii

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Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION

Racial and ethnic demographic change within American society and specifically
postsecondary education is expected in upcoming decades (Chideya, I999; Hu-DeHart,
2001; Lieberson, I991; Takaki, 1993). One might argue this change has already begun.
Chideya assesses the numerical increase of various racial and ethnic populations and their
increased political activity. She (1999, p.5) states,

America’s racial composition is changing more rapidly than ever. The

number of immigrants in America is the largest in any post-World War 11

period. Nearly one-tenth of the US. population is foreign born. Asian

Americans, the fastest-growing group in America, have begun to come

politically ofage in California and the Pacific Northwest (where a Chinese

American is governor of Washington State). And the Census Bureau

projects that the number of Latino Americans will surpass blacks as the

largest nonwhite group by 2005.

This dramatic increase raises the question of how society and postsecondary
education are preparing for responding to these demographic changes, including in the
area of leadership. In a broad assessment ofpostsecondary institutions, Hu-DeHart (2001,
p.86) maintains “our colleges and universities have strived to recruit African-American,
Latina/O, Native American, and Asian American students, as well as international
students and in some cases women students, to complement their existing core of white
male and often, middle-class students.” She also notes that postsecondary institutions
have in large part diversified the racial and ethnic make-up of their faculty, attempted to
introduce new courses tO the curriculum that speak to the experiences of racial and ethnic

populations, and provided more workshops and conferences about issues affecting these

populations that enhance the collegiate environment.

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Currently, many efforts are made to provide academic support to African
Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and some Asian American populations
(Matthews, 1992; Sowell, 1987). For example, although Asian Americans are the fastest
growing population in America (Chideya, 1999) and often times not considered “at-risk”,
some Asian American sub-populations continue to have unmet needs (Espiritu, 1992;
Kiang, 1994; Lee, 1992; Takaki, 1989; Wei, 1993; Zia, 2000). The California State
University Institute for Teaching and Learning released a report that studied the problems
and needs of Asian Pacific Americans (C 81, I990). The report revealed higher education
institutions’ failure to address the unmet needs of some Asian Pacific American sub-
populations who have limited English proficiency. Gordon (1990) explored the
controversial topic of whether Asian Pacific Americans should participate in racial and
ethnic group programs that focus on academic and financial aid issues, despite common
perceptions that Asian Pacific Americans are a model minority and do not experience
racism and oppression to the extent of other racial and ethnic populations. A third report
from a Conference on the Minority Student Today, acknowledged the need for Asian
Pacific American support in the areas of minority scholarships, remedial writing, student
advisement, mentoring, transfer programs, personalized support services, curriculum
development, improvement of instruction, summer programs and peer programs (SC U,
1989).

At the same time that the demographics continue to shift in favor ofetlmic
minorities overall, there is little evidence to suggest members of racial and ethnic groups
are assuming leadership roles in similar proportions to their population growth in society

or on college campuses. And yet, higher education institutions have unique Opportunities

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to respond to the need for increasing the participation of people-of-color in leadership
positions by cultivating their potential among college students. As noted, a significant
body of research has been devoted to investigating the impact of college experiences on
students-of-color (e.g., Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Tinto, 1993), which can ultimately
influence their contributions to society, including through formal leadership roles. Yet,
what prompts students-of-color into campus leadership positions and how leadership
potential is cultivated within this population is understudied. Mentoring is considered to
be one factor that contributes to a successful college experience for students-of-color
(Bowman et al., 1999; Stromei, 2000), and is also identified in the management literature
as an important aspect of leadership development. Therefore, the purpose of this study is
to explore the ways in which peer mentoring contributes to how students-of-color
develop as leaders.

Mentoring programs have grown in number and variation across the country as
academic institutions seek ways of increasing retention, providing meaningful college
experiences, and integrating students-of-color into the campus environment and
activities. These mentoring efforts take many forms including faculty-student mentoring,
staff-student mentoring, and peer mentoring and have many foci, such as transition into
college, academic major, research training, and leadership development. How much is
known about the impact of these mentoring programs on their multiple objectives varies.
Peer mentoring has been shown to be influence college students’ academic persistence
and ultimately graduation (Braden, 1998; Harris, 2002; Marable, 1999; Sarris, 1995;
Stromei, 2000), yet little is known about its effect on the leadership development of

students-of-color.

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Given the potential of peer mentoring to play a key role in influencing and
supporting students-of-color into leadership positions on campus and the social
responsibility of postsecondary institutions to cultivate citizens and leaders (Astin &
Astin, 2000), it seems important to understand the relationship, if any, between peer
mentoring and leadership development. This relationship could be valuable for any
student but may be particularly critical for students-of-color for whom role models,
support systems, and peer groups have already been shown to be related to positive
college experience (Granados & Lopez, 1999; Scisney-Matlock & Matlock, 2001;
Stromei, 2000) and who are underrepresented in campus leadership roles the same as they
are in larger societal leadership roles. This study can potentially result in greater
understanding of the extent to which students attribute their leadership development and
leadership identity to peer mentors.

By utilizing in-depth individual interviews with students-Of-color who are
actively involved in racial and ethnic student organizations in one Midwestern university
campus, I examined the following research question:

In what ways does peer mentoring contribute to how students-of-color develop as

leaders?

Part of the study involved clarifying how participants define peer mentoring as the
definition may be different for students-Of-color than is more commonly referenced in the
literature. As a starting place, my own definition comes from a combination of several
authors: Peer mentoring is a process where two individuals engage in a mutual exchange

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Consistent with other authors, the terms “Students of Color” or “racial and ethnic
groups” refer to the student population possessing the racial characteristics previously
described and encompasses African American, Asian Pacific American, Latino/a, and
Native American students in postsecondary education. Collectively, these groups are also
commonly referred to as ALANA students on various college campuses nationwide. l
purposefully elected to use the term “Student of Color” to substitute for the term
“Minority”, which can imply that this group is “less than”. Race is defined as ‘social
race’ referring to a “group of people who are socially defined in a given society
belonging together because of physical markers such as skin pigmentation, hair texture,
facial features, stature, and the like” (Cashmore et al., l996, p.297). Jones (1993, p.9)
extends the definition of race and notes, “Race becomes the basis for expectation
regarding social roles, performance levels, values, and norms and mores for group and
non—group members and in-group members alike.” These definitions served as the basis
for discussing racial and ethnic students in this study.

This study has potential to impact several areas. It provides information about
leadership development of students-Of-color in general, and the role of peer mentoring,
specifically. This understanding can be useful to educators as they develop programs and
services that promote leadership development, campus involvement, and other
interventions that contribute to quality. It may serve as a foundational study for further
research looking at the peer mentoring relationship over time, and the extent to which
those involved with peer mentoring and leadership on campus go on to continue these
activities in the larger society. Society is in great need of leadership that is inclusive of

underrepresented minorities, particularly as the demographics shift whereby racial and

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even preliminarily, of factors that foster early development of leaders of color while in

college may help cultivate these future leaders.

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Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

A review of the literature was conducted to provide a foundation for studying peer
mentoring of students-of-color in higher education. Research on mentoring in higher
education, and to some extent peer mentoring, finds its origins largely in the management
and organizational behavior literature. Three major areas were explored including
characteristics of peer mentoring, peer mentoring and leadership development, and
multicultural peer mentoring. This literature review focused on four characteristics of
peer mentoring including the leamer-centered nature, characteristics of mentor-mentee
(or prote'gé) relationships, the positive and negative aspects of mentoring in general, with
specific reference where available to peer mentoring of students, and the outcomes of
mentoring for students-of-color, who are the subject of this research. The literature
review also looked at connections between peer mentoring and leadership development,
whereby mentoring has been tied to skill development, shared experience, and
knowledge, enhancing the learning of leadership and creating a leadership pipeline.
Lastly, a literature review was conducted to explore multicultural peer mentoring in
various contexts, peer mentoring within individual ethnic backgrounds, peer mentoring
across student-of-color populations, the impact of peer mentoring in addressing societal
problems, and the complexity of multicultural peer mentoring.

A number of Operational definitions of mentoring in higher education were
borrowed from the field of management and organizational behavior (Daloz, 1999; Jacobi
1991; Murray, 1991; Zey, 1997). Terms such as guiding, developmental relationship

building, teaching, counseling. protecting. promoting. sponsoring, giving and receiving

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were used to describe the process Of mentoring in the private sector. Daloz (1999) views
mentoring as a process of guiding. He states, “[Mentors] lead us along the journey of our
lives. We trust them because they have been there before. They embody our hopes, cast
light on the way ahead, interpret arcane signs, warn us of lurking dangers, and point out
unexpected delights along the way” (p.18). Zey (1997) maintains that mentoring
contributes to the career and development of others. He states, “A mentor is a person who
oversees the career and development of another person, usually a junior, through
teaching, counseling, providing psychological support, protecting, and at times promoting
or sponsoring” (p.7). Kram’s (1988) work suggests that mentoring contributes to both the
career advancement and personal development of individuals. In one example from
higher education, Murray’s (1991) work mirrors the definitions used in business when
she says, “facilitated mentoring is a structure and series of processes designed to create
effective mentoring relationships, guide the desired behavior change of those involved,
and evaluate the results for the protégés, the mentors, and the organization with the
primary purpose of systematically developing the skills and leadership abilities of the
less-experienced members of an organization” (p.5).

The mentoring literature describes peer mentoring for the purpose of learning.
Lipton et al. (2003) describe it as a continuum of leaming-focused interactions, while
Zachary (2000) operationalizes peer mentoring as an exchange whereby learning is
facilitated between individuals.

There are many components to leaming-centered peer mentoring. For example,
Miller (2002) highlights developing and demonstrating personal qualities to model for the

mentee; reinforcing their knowledge of the content being shared; developing

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communication, interpersonal, tutoring, counseling, and mentoring skills; and lastly,
sharing the lessons learned in the mentoring experience so that others can learn. Murray
(2001) maintains that peer mentoring can serve as a resource as well as an opportunity to
develop job skills. As part of the ongoing relationship that develops with and between
students, Sarris (1995) suggests key components of peer mentoring include establishing
clarity in the goals and objectives of the mentoring experience; creating a climate that is
open, trusting, welcoming, and supportive; developing connections with other individuals
to provide additional resources to the mentee; and lastly, demonstrating organization with
regards to honoring time commitments and following through with tasks.

Another area of mentoring literature addresses characteristics of mentor-mentee
(or protége’) relationships. Portner (1998) notes four aspects Of the mentor-protege
relationship, which include relating, assessing, coaching, and guiding. Establishing trust,
attention to thoughts and feelings, and awareness of nonverbal communication all
contribute to the development of mentor-mentee relationships. Johnson and Sullivan
(1995) point out that different life experiences between mentor and mentee may affect the
mentoring relationship as a result of how experience informs their perspectives about
various issues. Especially in a collegiate environment, peer mentoring may be framed in
terms of friendship (Daloz, 1999), because there may be greater equality between the
mentor and mentee. Other authors describe the interconnectedness between the mentor
and mentee (e.g., Parks, 2000). Because student peers may be much more comparable in
age and experience than corporate peers, Ender and Newton (2000) draw a distinction
between peer mentoring and professional mentoring. They argue that peer mentors are

more closely aligned with the roles of assisting, coaching, tutoring, and supporting,

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whereas professional mentors teach, train, interpret, and counsel students. While there are
similarities between peer mentoring in business and peer mentoring in education, unique
characteristics of student interactions make peer mentoring in education distinct.

The third focus of peer mentoring literature is the positive and negative effects of
mentoring in general, and peer mentoring specifically. Reilly (1992) describes the impact
that mentoring may have on students, such as increased self-esteem, better developed
skills in the field of interest, more clearly defined career options, connections made
between work and school, and increased motivation to achieve. Harris (2002) studied the
outcomes of peer mentoring and found connections to retention and personal growth of
students. Other benefits of mentoring include establishing friendships; inspiration
generated by role modeling, a matured sense of responsibility and direction, and better
understood and developed potentials (Reilly, I992). Mentoring not only benefits the
mentor and the mentee, but the institution also reaps benefits from mentoring
relationships including increased retention and personal growth of students overall
(Harris, 2002). This has been found to be especially true for the high recruitment and
retention rates among minority students (N EA, 1997). Authors also point out the negative
sides of mentoring. Zey (1997) describes three possible occurrences that may contribute
to a failed mentor relationship and ultimately have a negative impact on the
organization’s success. Some of these occurrences include the black halo effect, whereby
the mentee receives a negative impression of the mentor, the mentor’s failure to protect
their mentee under pressure, and situations where the prote’gé feels a sense of betrayal

when the mentor violates their confidentiality.

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Finally, there is a body of research describing the outcomes of mentoring for
students-Of-color, although these studies rarely looked specifically at peer mentoring.
Similar to white students, mentoring plays a significant role in the undergraduate
experiences of students-of—color (Bowman et al., 1999; Jacobi 1991; Portner, 1998;
Stromei, 2000). A joint statement sponsored by the American Association of University
Professors and the National Education Association (1997) outlines strategies to increase
minority participation and achievement through mentoring-type activities. These
strategies include: (1) participation in bridge programs or activities; (2) involvement in
undergraduate activities and programs; (3) development of graduate activities and
programs; and (4) sustained informal collegial mentoring relationships. These two
organizations recognize the need for formal and informal mentoring relationships and
strategies in order to support students-of-color on today’s college campuses. At the same
time, Jacobi (I991) emphasizes the growing body of mentoring research must explore the
links between mentoring and undergraduate academic success with greater complexity.
Many of the authors cited here suggest additional research is needed to understand the
dynamics and development Of specific forms of mentoring relationships in higher
education.

Peer Mentoring and Leadership Development

In the management and leadership literature, mentoring has long been tied to
various aspects of leadership development; although less abundant, the same connections
have been made for leaders in higher education, particularly presidents. Mentoring has
been tied to skill development, shared experience and knowledge, enhancing the learning

of leadership and creating a leadership pipeline.

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Business has often capitalized on mentoring those holding leadership positions for
the purpose of developing skills (Alberg & Raines, 2004; Duvall, 2003; Fullan, 2001),
which enables them to be more effective. A second characteristic of leadership in the
context of peer mentoring is the value of shared experiences between beginning leaders
and experienced leaders (Land, 2004; Murphy, 2004). One aspect of shared experiences
involves a shift from the traditional long term mentoring relationship to one that is more
short-term that promotes professional development opportunities for both leaders (Land,
2004)

Another aspect Ofmentoring found in the literature is the effect Of leaders
learning valuable lessons in the mentoring process that can be applied in situations where
they lead (Bennis, 1989). Further, quality mentoring is defined as leadership whereby
meaningful relationships meet the needs of others, unselfish information is disseminated,
and there is a willingness to care (Gardiner et al., 2000).

In the context of student leadership development, peer mentoring is described as
the process of leaders mentoring others in the organization to create a pipeline of future
positional leaders (Komives et al., 1998). Research on student leadership development
has been conducted to understand how students come to identify themselves as leaders,
display leadership characteristics in peer mentoring relationships by accepting
responsibility for the development of others, learn in teams, and sustain organizations
(Komives et al., 2003). Some work has explored how mentoring might promote a strong
transition for newly identified student organization leaders (Martin, 2001; Mullen et al.,

1999). While authors explore peer mentoring in the context of leadership development,

there is little research that explores leadership development in the context of peer
mentoring.
Multicultural Peer Mentoring

A third area of the peer mentoring literature that is important to this study is the
multicultural characteristics embedded in the mentoring relationship. Researchers explore
multicultural peer mentoring in various contexts, the study of peer mentoring within
individual ethnic backgrounds, the study of peer mentoring across student-of-color
populations, the impact of peer mentoring in addressing societal problems, and the
complexity of multicultural peer mentoring.

Peer mentoring in multicultural organizations and communities-of—color need
further exploration. There is a need for greater understanding minority student
organizations that have developed leaders within those communities (Komives et al.,
1998). While some authors (e. g., Aragon, 2001) argue there are broad connections
between the individuals’ race, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnic background and
the influence Of these characteristics on the peer mentoring process, understanding the
depths of these connections remain unknown. Facilitating cultural issues in peer
mentoring relationships among students-of-color is also an area needing increased
understanding (Chang et al., 2003; Klasen & Clutterbuck, 2002).

Peer mentoring has been studied both within and across individual student-of-
color populations primarily at the undergraduate level; however, little research has been
conducted in the context of leadership development. For example, Latino students active
in student organizations on campus face challenges with peer mentoring new members

(Padilla, 1997). African American women attending graduate and professional schools at

a predominantly white institution reported positive effects from peer mentoring (Harper
& Patton, 2004). African American males shared the degree of influence of peer mentors
on various life decisions within their cultural and gender circles (Braden, 1998). Asian
American students need peer mentoring that supports leadership that is closely linked to
the cultural values with which they were raised (Liang et al., 2002). Peer mentors play a
significant role in supporting students-of-color in academic learning communities
(Marable, 1999). Peer mentoring also serves as a process for promoting greater
understanding of diversity among student-Of-color communities (Matlock & Scisney-
Matlock, 2001). Graduate students-of-color find peer mentoring a meaningful alternative
to the traditional mentoring they receive from their faculty advisors (Bonilla et al., 1994).

The research explores the impact of peer mentoring in solving psychosocial and
cultural problems. Students report that issues of discrimination and isolation continue to
exist in higher education as does a lack of mentoring for people-of-color (Allen et al.,
2002). However, when present, peer mentoring has addressed some of the societal
stereotypes across racial and cultural differences and past inequities to accessing
resources for people-of-color (Aguirre, 2000; Scheurich & Young, 2002; Torrance et al.,
1998). Further, a connection is made between peer mentoring and minority student
retention. One-to-one peer mentoring responds to retention problems for both
undergraduate and graduate minority students and provides insight in navigating the
campus environment from a multicultural perspective (Granados & Lopez, 1999; Harris,
2002; Stromei, 2000).

The research reveals studies that explore the complexity ofmulticultural peer

mentoring among diverse populations. As organizations become more diverse, there is a

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need to recognize and develop others within the organization in non-traditional ways
(Crosby, 1999; Rodriguez, 1995). This process becomes increasingly more complex
when mentoring relationships are comprised of individuals who are dissimilar in many
ways such as gender and ethnicity. The gender and ethnic diversity of the mentor and
mentee can impact the nature Of the mentoring relationship (Gardiner, 2002). As a result,
the complexity of multicultural peer mentoring has impacted the lack of qualitative
research on this subject matter (Cohen & Gailbraith, 1995).
The Developmental Relationship Model

Taking a developmental perspective to understanding multicultural peer
mentoring becomes more relative and less absolute in practice. Kram (1988) created the
Developmental Relationship Model for understanding the operational construct of
mentoring relationships, which contribute to both the career advancement and personal
development of each individual within the workplace organization. While a distinction is
drawn between Kram’s approach to mentoring relationships and peer mentoring
relationships, both possess career advancement and psychosocial functions.
Role of Mentoring: Peer Relationships and Mentor Relationships

Kram (1988) defines mentoring as the process Of a more experienced adult _
helping a younger individual learn to navigate in the adult world and the world of work
through support, guidance, and counseling. A mentoring relationship is deemed as a type
of developmental relationship whereby both career and psychosocial functions are
present. Kram (1988) defines five approaches for mentoring relationships that enhance
career advancement including sponsorship, exposure-and-visibility, coaching, protection,

and challenging work assignments. Sponsorship is the active process of nominating an

IS

individual in both formal and informal settings for advancement through the hierarchy of
the organization. Exposure-and-visibility is defined as assigning responsibilities that
allow one to develop relationships with key figures in the organization who may judge
his or her potential for further advancement. Coaching is noted as suggesting specific
strategies for accomplishing work objectives, achieving recognition, and achieving career
aspirations. Protection involves taking credit and blame in controversial situations, as
well as intervening in situations where the mentee is ill equipped to achieve satisfactory
resolution. Lastly, challenging work assignments enables the mentee to develop specific
competencies and to experience a sense of accomplishment in a professional role, which
encourages learning; such assignments are supported with technical training and ongoing
performance feedback. These mentoring approaches can be applied to develop future
leaders within a workplace organization (Maxwell, 1995). I seek to explore whether these
mentoring approaches can also be applied to develop future leaders within a student
organization.

In terms of personal development and an increasing sense of competence and self-
worth, mentoring relationships take four forms including acceptance-and-confirmation,
counseling, role modeling, and friendship (Kram, 1988). Acceptance-and-confirmation
involves both individuals deriving a sense of self from the positive regard conveyed by
the other. Counseling enables the mentee to explore personal concerns that may interfere
with a positive sense of self in the organization. Role modeling reflects the attitudes,
values, and behaviors that provide a model for one to serve as an Object of admiration,
emulation, and respect. Fourth, friendship is characterized by social interaction that

results in mutual liking and understanding and enjoyable informal exchanges.

Peer mentoring relationships are an alternative to the traditionally conceived
mentor relationship, providing some critical mentoring functions and are relatively
available to individuals (Kram, 1988). Kram identifies types of peer relationships
informational, collegial, and special as three. Informational peer mentoring relationships
focus on information exchange, have a low frequency of contact, and little confirmation
or emotional support is provided. Collegial peer mentoring relationships involve
information sharing with emotional support, feedback, and confirmation. Special peer
mentoring relationships involve intimacy, which promotes the replacement of pretense
and formal roles with greater self-disclosure and self-expression. For example, in a
student organization, informational peer mentoring relationships may take place in
general meetings where students receive information but have little direct contact with
other individuals in the organization. Collegial peer mentoring in student organizations
may occur when students work on team projects and demonstrate support for each other’s
work. Special peer mentoring may occur between student leaders throughout their tenure
in leadership positions within a given organization.

Peer mentoring relationships possess three career functions including information
sharing, career strategizing, and job-related feedback. Information sharing enables both
individuals’ technical knowledge and perspectives on the organization that help them get
their work done. Career strategizing is the process of individuals discussing their career
options and dilemmas, using a peer to explore their own career. Thirdly, job-related
feedback occurs when peers give and receive feedback concerning work-related matters

to evaluate their own experiences and clarify their own strengths and weaknesses.

lnforrnation sharing is deemed informational, while career strategizing and job-related
feedback are collegial.

Like mentoring relationships, peer mentoring relationships also have psychosocial
functions, which are aspects that enhance the sense of competence, identity, and
effectiveness in a professional role (Kram, 1988). Peer relationships provide
confirmation, emotional support, personal feedback, and friendship for those involved.
Confirmation occurs during the sharing of perceptions, values, and beliefs related to their
lives at work or in the case of students, school, and through discovering views they have
in common. Emotional support consists of listening to and counseling of each other
during periods of transition and stress. Personal feedback is Offered by the peer,
providing insight into one’s leadership style, one’s impact on others, and one’s ability to
balance multiple commitments in their lives. Finally, friendship encompasses concern
about each other that extends beyond work and reduces the sense of alienation or stress
individuals experience at every career stage. All four psychosocial functions are
identified as special, meaning there is more depth compared to informational and
collegial approaches.

Further, Kram (1998) distinguishes between the attributes of mentor relationships
and peer mentor relationships. Mentoring relationships are complementary in that both
individuals can fulfill important needs different from each other through the relationship.
While peer mentoring relationships are not viewed as complementary, they have
mutuality whereby both individuals help as well as receive help from the other. Unlike

peer mentoring relationships in which both mentor and mentee are characterized as

18

relatively equal partners, traditional mentoring relationships assume inequality exists

between partners and yet, the needs of both partners can be met.

Table 1

Developmental Functions: Comparison of Mentor Relationships
versus Peer Relationships

 

Mentor Relationships

Peer Relationships
Informational, Collegial, and Special

 

Career Functions

I Sponsorship

I Exposure-and-visibility

I Coaching

I Protection

I Challenging work assignments

Career Functions

I Infomiation sharing (informational)
I Career strategizing (collegial)

I Job-related feedback (collegial)

 

Psychosocial Functions

I Acceptance-and-confirmation
I Counseling

I Role modeling

I Friendship

Psychosocial Functions

I Confirmation (special)

I Emotional support (special)

I Personal feedback (special)

I Friendship (collegial and special)

 

 

Special Attribute
I Complementarity

 

 

Special Attribute
I Mutuality

 

Kram (1988)

 

Phases ofa Mentor Relationship: Initiation, Cultivation, Separation, and Redefinition
Kram (1988) identifies several phases of a mentoring relationship including
initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition. The mentoring relationship is
established in the initiation phase and increases in value between mentor and protege. In
a student organization, two students may be matched in a mentoring program. In the
cultivation phase, the maximum range of career and psychosocial functions are provided.
For example, student organizations often host activities and events to encourage mentors
and mentees to cultivate their relationships. Both individuals continue to benefit due to

the increase in meaningful opportunities, more frequent interaction, and the deepening

emotional bond. In a student organization, students may work closely together tO develop
new initiatives for the benefit of the membership and as a result, meet more frequently
and develop a friendship.

The separation phase occurs after a significant change in the structural role
relationship or in the emotional experience of the relationship occurs. As the academic
year comes to an end and students change roles within an organization, the mentor and
mentee can experience separation. Lastly, the redefinition phase is an indefinite period
where the relationship ends or different relationship characteristics are adopted. Though
student organizations experience constant change, the mentor and mentee can redefine
the nature of their relationship in ways that best meets their changing needs.

While Kram (I988) distinguishes between mentoring relationships and peer
relationships, she identifies areas of overlap and similarity. This intersection supports the
notion of a peer mentoring relationship. In the context of higher education, both the
mentor relationship construct and the peer relationship construct possess aspects that can
assist me in exploring peer mentoring among college students-of-color.

Using the Developmental Relationship Model to Examine the Role of Peer Mentoring

Kram’s model of mentoring provides a framework to view peer mentoring
relationships, despite the model being based on workplace mentoring. Kram’s construct
of developmental relationships is the only known model in the mentoring literature to
comprehensively operationalize the mentoring process and the peer relationship process.
By combining her perspectives into one, it seems reasonable to use to explore peer
mentoring as it relates to college student-of—color leaders. If more is known about peer

mentoring influences on student-Of-color leadership development, the potential for peer

20

mentoring as a commonly utilized experience for this population is heightened. As a
result, the overall objective to contribute to the leadership development of students-of-
color, their retention and academic success in higher education, and ultimately their

contribution to society might be supported.

CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY

Peer mentoring could play a key role in the leadership development of students-
of—color; therefore, it is essential to understand the nature of the relationship between
these two concepts. This study could potentially unveil aspects of the peer mentoring
relationship to provide insight to underrepresented leadership in both higher education
and society-at-large. The choice of research methodology can affect the ways in which
we understand the complexities of role modeling, developing support systems, and
establishing peer groups among students-of-color. A qualitative design was utilized to
examine the following research question:

In what ways does peer mentoring contribute to how students-of-color develop as

leaders?

Creswell (1998) defines qualitative research as a process of understanding based
on distinct methodological traditions of inquiry that explore a social or human problem.
The researcher builds a complex, holistic picture, analyzes words, reports detailed views
of informants, and conducts the study in a natural setting. This study explored the peer
mentoring interaction, which examines a single phenomenon. Qualitative techniques are
more suitable for gathering viewpoints, meanings, and purposes of people’s actions
(Creswell 1998). Marshall and Rossman (1989) emphasize how qualitative questions and
problems usually come from real-world observations and focus on interactions and
processes in socio-cultural systems and organizations. As the researcher, my experiences
as a former student and current professional in higher education provided me with “real-

world observations” of peer mentoring’s influence on the student-Of-color leadership

22

development process, which sparked my interest in this topic. Additionally, Marshall and
Rossman (1989) stress the need to place research questions within a logical framework
that connects them in terms of inquiry and context of related studies. The study was
informed by my lived experiences and the literature reviewed in the previous chapter,
particularly the work of Kram (1988) and her developmental relationships model.

The study was situated at a single, land grant institution located in the Midwest.
The sample for this project was students-of-color holding leadership positions within
major racial and ethnic community-based organizations on campus. Through the use of
formal and semi- structured face-to-face interviews, I explored student-of-color leaders’
perceptions of the role of peer mentoring on the leadership development process.
Participant Involvement and Demographics

The sample was drawn from a pool of students-of-color currently serving as
president, co-president, or vice-president of an ALANA (African American, Latino,
Asian Pacific American, and Native American) registered student organization on
campus. The Student Life office provides the campus community a list of all registered
student organizations including contact information and organizational mission on their
website. While there were over 400 registered student groups, approximately eighty
organizations’ missions were racially and ethnically focused. From the list of registered
student groups, I identified the four major minority governing student organizations that
represented a council of all racial and ethnic minority student groups on campus. This
council comprised four individual organizations, each representing a racial-ethnic group,
including Asian Pacific American students, African American students, Chicano/Latino

students, and Native American students. I visited each office and requested the names

and contact information of the current president, co-president, and vice-president of each
of the four governing organizations. Selection criteria for participation included
attendance at the institution of study, the students’ racial identity, and their formal
leadership position in a major governing organization representing their ethnic student
community. The racial identity of the participants was self-identified and made known by
their chosen involvement in one of the four major racial and ethnic student communities
on campus.
Data Collection

Students were purposefully selected for participation (Seidman, 1991) based on
the position they held in a major governing organization representing their ethnic student
community. The focus of this study was limited to the four main ethnic student
organizations from which students, who currently or previously held the president or
vice-president position at the time of the interview, were invited to participate. The
African American Student Union (AASU) had one president and one vice-president. The
Asian American Alliance (AAA), Chicano/Latino Network (CLN), and Native American
Student Association (NASA) each had two co-presidents and one vice-president. Initially,
the current president or vice-president of each organization was invited to participate and
invitations to former presidents and vice-presidents of the same organizations followed.
Five to seven interviewees from each of the ALANA groups were contacted by e-mail
and phone asking them to participate in an individual interview. A total of twenty two
students were invited to participate in this study.

All twenty-two individuals agreed immediately upon the initial invitation via

email and phone contact, however two individuals later declined to participate due to

24

scheduling conflicts. As a result, a total of twenty interviews were conducted each lasting
approximately one hour in length; they were recorded on a cassette tape with participant
permission, and later transcribed. The interviews were conducted in a reserved space
within the student center where all four major governing student-Of-color organizations
were housed on campus. All interviews were scheduled over the span of three weeks
during times of convenience for both participant and investigator.

This sample was selected based on the literature and my own lived experiences
and professional observations with the belief that students who hold leadership positions
have had experiences that contributed to their development as leaders. Siedman (1991)
explains that data collection involves intentionally selecting informants that can answer
the research question along with diverse sampling approaches to include commonalities
and differences among participants. The president and vice-president positions were
chosen because of the commonly held belief (Komives et al., 1998) that people in these
positions often serve as the leaders of organizations. It is important to note that in the data
presentation of this study, leaders were identified as current or former leaders based on
the role they held at the time I collected my data. Interviewees were selected from each of
the ALANA groups because of my research interests in knowing if race and ethnicity
affects perceived contributions of peer mentoring to leadership development. Lastly, the
setting to conduct interviews was identified as a comfortable and safe atmosphere for the
participants.

Participants were asked a series quuestions about their mentoring experiences as
positional leaders (see Appendix A). The interview protocol contained questions

developed by the researcher. Participants were asked questions about their demographics,

student organizational involvement, and their perspectives on leadership and the impact
of peer mentoring in their development as leaders. Upon completion of the oral questions,
participants received a paper and a set of markers and were asked to draw a picture of the
impact of peer mentoring on their leadership development throughout their college
experience. Drawings are a form of text and can serve as a medium to capture reflective
experiences of students (Weber, 1995). Visual data were gathered in the form of these
drawings with the hopes of providing an additional venue of expression of thoughts and
perspectives for participants. Participants were first asked to draw an image of
themselves in relation to their chosen racial and ethnic community-based organization.
Second, they were asked to draw an image of themselves while holding their formal
leadership position within the racial and ethnic community-based organization. Lastly,
participants were asked to visually depict influences that contributed to their development
as leaders. Upon completion, participants were asked to explain their drawings, which
were captured in the transcription of the interview. I took both descriptive and reflective
field notes during the interviews. Glesne (1999) describes descriptive notes as portraits of
the informants and a reconstruction of the dialogue. She defines reflective notes as an
opportunity for the researcher to record personal thoughts such as speculations, problems
and impressions.

It was not intended for the drawings to be interpreted by the researcher. Instead,
participants were asked to interpret their drawings in order to accurately capture their
intended meanings. During the interviews, participants explained their drawings which
eliminated external interpretations altogether. The drawings provided another avenue for

participants to express their responses to the interview questions. Additionally, the

26

drawings were intended to help participants recall events. Ultimately, participants in this
study expressed interest and excitement for sharing their visual responses.
Data Management

Each participant signed and received a copy of an informed consent form
providing detailed information about the project, the estimated time of interview,
voluntary participation, confidentiality, and contact information. Each individual
interview was conducted face-to-face and was audio-recorded on a cassette tape, which
was later transcribed verbatim. Additionally, as the researcher, I maintained control over
the line of questioning and recognized that my presence may have biased the responses
given. Descriptive and reflective field notes were organized by participant. The data and
evidence collected from the interviewees were summarized, edited, and interpreted by the
researcher. The names of the participants were replaced with pseudonyms to ensure
confidentiality.
Analysis

While Glesne (1999) argues that qualitative analysis is not exact, she recommends
that researchers develop categories, and make comparisons and contrasts. Additionally,
she supports being open to possibilities to see the contrary and alternative explanations
for findings. For this study, I collected information from the field, sorted it into
categories, compiled the information into story format and organized drawings with the
qualitative text provided by the interviewees. All participant interviews were transcribed
and responses to each question were grouped together. I reviewed all transcriptions and
made notations of significant points from each interview. The most common responses

across multiple participants were highlighted and separated. From a list ofnumerous

individual points, themes were developed to represent categories of common responses.
Findings were revealed through patterns found across the interviews.

For all participant narratives, the data and evidence were presented in three forms:
demographics, direct quotations, and a summary of events. Demographics included the
participants’ education and background, their general perception of their experience in
college, and their mentoring relationships. The direct quotations showed the experiences
of the students while in college. The summary of events revealed participant recollection
of how and when mentoring impacted them.

The analysis explored the ways in which peer mentors shaped the participants’
views of leadership identity development throughout their college experience. Further, I
explored the extent to which participants attributed their leadership identity development
to mentoring and the extent to which peer mentors influenced the participants’ thoughts
about issues of racial identity development and leadership aspirations. Themes emerged
from participant responses in the areas of definition, influence, support, and purpose.
Direct quotes represented a sampling of perspectives from multiple students as opposed
to including quotes from all participants. After completing all interviews, I conducted
member checks (Creswell 1998) by sharing the themes with five study participants to
confirm if they were accurate in representing their perspectives about peer mentoring.
Role of the Researcher

As the researcher, I served as the primary instrument, a human instrument, for
data collection and analysis rather than using an inventory or questionnaire. With each
interview, I was conscious of epistemological assumptions that could occur based on

researcher-participant interaction (Glesne, 1999). I recognized the need to understand

28

how I knew what I knew about the subject matter. Methodological assumptions may also
exist when identifying emerging design categories during the research process (Glesne,
1999). I was cognizant that my methods for finding patterns in the data were more
suitable for gathering viewpoints, meanings, and purposes of participant actions. My
identity as a person-of-color and my prior professional experience working with this
population may have affected the study. Though I could have potentially been known to
some of the students because of my prior leadership involvement in earlier decades, this
was not the case for most of the participants whom I interviewed.

Assumptions and Limitations

Several assumptions in this study were identified. First, within college student
organizations, students-of-color were deemed leaders based on their position in the group
and further developed as leaders as they participated in these organizations. Second, these
student leaders were mentored by other students-of—color. Third, students have a sense of
what it means to be a leader. Lastly, I acknowledge the impact of the terminology used.
There is a limitation to using the term mentoring because of the connotations associated
with the term. The same could be said about other terms such as coach and guide, and so
while I acknowledge the potential affect of any choice, I elected the word most frequently
referenced in student literature.

A delimiter of the study is that I did not study whether the experiences shared
with me by the subjects of this study were unique to students-of-color and not
experienced by white students. Another delimiter of this study is that participants reflect
experiences from one higher education site and only within four major racial ethnic

advocacy groups, which could affect the degree of transferability of lessons learned. Peer

29

mentoring among students who do not identify with advocacy-focused organizations may
be constructed quite differently for student leaders of color in these contexts.

I recognized that some aspects of the interview protocol were difficult to flush
out, possibly due to the limited time and circumstances of when the interviews were
conducted. The majority of participants were challenged with recalling past events after
one or more years had passed and after a series Of multiple interactions with individuals
in their life as a leader. Because of the significant time lapse and abundance of contact
with individuals, the participants may have had difficulty recalling specific events, which
took place earlier in the academic year and in years prior. Becker (1998) maintains that
lessons are drawn after information is gathered and theories are confirmed, challenged or
refined.

A great deal of information was revealed in students’ perceptions of their own
development. Yet, as is true with most qualitative research (Creswell 1998), the data
cannot be generalized to all students-of-color because only twenty-two participants were
interviewed. However, the findings may be transferable to other settings and to students-
of-color that I did not interview, which may influence future studies exploring many of

these issues in other contexts.

30

Chapter 4
FINDINGS
This chapter discusses three themes that emerged from interviews with the

participants: Defining, Positioning, and Generativity. Defining exists as peer mentors
are viewed as individuals with the same status but who possess experience or advanced
knowledge that contributes to the mentees’ development as leaders. Positioning reflects
peer leaders in the organizational community who influence participants to assume
positional roles with increasing responsibility over time. Generativity occurs whereby
former peer leaders in the organizational community serve as peer mentors to current
leaders who in tum served as peer mentors to emerging leaders in the community.

DEFINING
Theme 1: Peer mentors are viewed as individuals who share common characteristics
yet are distinguished by their experiences and advanced knowledge, which is shared

with participants as they develop as leaders.

 

“T he [C o-chair of Native American
, Student Association] influenced me
during my freshman year. His
personality was amazing. Most of
all, he wasfi'iendly. I admired his
involvement in the Native American
community and was moved by his
speeches. ” -A ngeni

 

 

 

 

 

(Figure 1, Hand drawn by participant, Angeni,)

3|

Participants identify peer mentors as individuals who possess similar
characteristics including academic pursuits in higher education and shared leadership
activities. They are identified as equal in status, motivational, problem-solvers,
confidential, and possessing a common lifestyle. Sharing occurs between peer mentors
and participants, and a willingness by peer mentors to mutually exchange ideas and
perspectives with current leaders is highly regarded. Peer mentors share problems and
challenges, solution-based approaches, insightful observations, interaction on multiple
levels, and in the context of diversity. Peer mentoring is distinguished from other forms
of support based on the type of advice that is given and the presence and/or lack of
friendship.

Peer mentor characteristics

The nature of interaction among students in the organization is based on a shared
experience. Miguel views peer mentors as fellow students who are equal in status because
they are also in college, yet they possess more knowledge about issues that students face
while in college because of their experiences. Further, he emphasizes the value of
interpersonal communication in which thoughts, opinions, and perspectives are shared
between peers. In the organization, Miguel experienced a sense of equality among other
students despite differences in academic year, positional role in the organization, or
graduate versus undergraduate status. He claims all students in the organization serve as
mentors to each other by providing support, and listening to and confiding in one another
about personal matters. This exchange creates a mutually beneficial situation whereby
peers benefit by the knowledge they gain as they apply it to their own lives.

I think if you have someone that you find as your equal but they have
information that you don’t and it’s the sharing of that knowledge. It’s

32

giving your personal advice when they ask for it or being there for them
when they need you in whatever way. I definitely feel that part.

Chicano/ Latino Network (C/ LN) is definitely all peer mentors that people
are all equal; even [though] some people might be in a position one year
and a different one the next. They are all peers and they all mentor each
other. I think we are all there to support each other even from freshmen to
seniors or graduate students. We are all students in the same boat. So, you
just need someone to listen to and someone you can confide in and it’s
probably someone who has been in the same situation or whom you feel
comfortable.

Participants also describe peer mentors as coaches to students as players. Cesar,
who used this analogy, defines his role as peer mentor by focusing on something other
students are passionate about and helping them develop the passion into a skill or talent.
Showing interest in another’s passion is a way of being able to influence them. Much like
a coach, Cesar says a peer mentor possesses knowledge of how one develops, and goes
on to say,

Being able to take someone that has a drive or a passion for something...

Seeing them developing other interests into a passion. Being there as a

coach and helping them develop into a player. Take one of those average

players that have talent but doesn’t really see it and train and coach them.

Give them an opportunity to see that there is actually something there.

You can even help them develop that passion and do what they want to do.

Taking an interest in them.

Marcus describes peer mentors as individuals who are in a similar place in terms
Of experiences and current lifestyle, but are also ahead in some way; they serve as role
models. He describes them as motivators and encouragers much like coaches. Marcus
also acknowledges the need for connectedness between the two people that allows for
exchange of information and ideas. He explains,

[They are] someone who is sort of the [in] same phase of life or similar

life experience. [They are] someone who is a little advanced. [They are]

someone who takes the time to be a sounding board, encourages you, and

be a coach. [They are] someone to help you get more out of yourself than
you would have otherwise. A good example is a role model. You have a

33

down to earth relationship because they are in the same boat you are in,
but it is someone you can look up to because they are a little more
advanced they are further down the path than you are. They are in the
same relative age group and phase in life.

Jay clarifies that a prerequisite to peer mentoring is not age, but rather experience
that is valuable for the mentee as that person encounters similar experiences. He points
out the need for peer mentors to help problem-solve based on knowledge they have
acquired.

Not necessarily older in age but a peer mentor would be someone who has
already gone thru similar experiences as their mentee and able to help that
mentee navigate thru the system to try to help them find resources, get
them tools necessary for themselves to make the transition or to get thru
the problem their going through.

Mia emphasizes the value of avoiding status differences, which she thinks can
happen if peer mentors overly value their own past experiences and knowledge. She
recognized differences in knowledge and access to resources on campus, even though
both peer and mentee are students. But, she insists that mentors are most impactful when
they view and treat their mentees as equals and focus on mentee needs. These needs
encompass having someone to serve as a sounding board, to provide sensible and
practical guidance, and to assist in solving problems.

Peer mentoring to me is like you can’t be a person who feels that they are
above another person because you have more links to resources. I think
you have to feel like you can walk in their shoes and understand what their
issues and problems are. But in the same sense have some realistic
solutions for them but not making them feel like you’re above them. I
think that’s when it goes wrong. When you make people feel like they’re
below you. Some of the racial ethnic students, I hear them say oh those are
my students. What are you talking about? Those are students just as much
as you are. Some of them are probably older than you or just the same age
and you’re making them feel like they’re below you. What’s the reason
because you have a title to your name doesn’t mean anything. I think it’s
all in the sense of being realistic, being able to listen, and understanding

34

what they’re going through and being able to help them in that. That’s
how I define peer mentoring.

Mia’s relationship with her roommate who she views as her peer mentor demonstrates
effective peer mentoring. She values the confidentiality that is maintained between them
because it allows Mia to openly express opinions without fear of retribution or
consequence due to her highly visible position as co-chair. Additionally, she was able to
share problems with her peer mentor, who provided alternative perspectives to situations
that Mia posed, and thereby helped in solving issues. Their relationship was comfortable
and trusting. Mia felt her peer mentor was her equal and was comfortable sharing some of
her most private thoughts.

It’s just being on the same level and talking about issues in the sense of

not forced. It’s just kind of like you’re a cool person and I want to talk to

you and I feel like what 1 say to you isn’t going to leave this room or

you’re not going to pass judgment on me. That’s hard when you have

somebody that... I mean me and Ella are really good friends and so I knew

if I told her something she wasn’t going to go tell other people like Mia

doesn’t like [another student]. She never would do that so I felt more

comfortable telling her what my problems were. She wouldn’t give me

solutions but she’d help me think about different things in a different

perspective and that also helps as being a peer mentor.
Sharing between peer mentors and their mentees

Sharing different problems with peer mentors became a helpful means to cope and
deal with challenges. Miguel experiences validation from peers’ ability to relate to his
situation, directly or indirectly. Having someone to confide in and gather advice from
who possesses valuable experience and shares their reflective thoughts about how they
handled situations was helpful to Miguel.

Me, personally. it’s definitely important. My friends and family I

definitely talk to all the time, peer mentors as well. It feels nice when you

say to someone I have this problem and they’re like I know exactly what
you’re talking about; whether or not they do, you know they’re at least

35

familiar with the problem. They’ve faced the same situation or had some
experience that might help whether just listening or being able to confide
in them or get advice. Either way they got something to offer.

Jorge values the motivational communication style of his peer mentors and
benefits from the high level of optimism and realism they display. He is encouraged
when presented with scenarios of possibility.

I think that peer mentoring is very important. I think a lot of people do it
unconsciously with our [siblings at college]. They try to follow our
footsteps with what we’re doing. We say don’t do this, do good in school
so that’s how peer mentoring is very important. It keeps people on the
right track. This is what you can do to be successful. Not what you have to
do, but this is what we’ve done and this is what you can do.

Karen describes how peer mentors shared valuable insight about the role of co-
president with her. She used this information to make a decision about whether or not to
run for the position. The former co-presidents of the organization were willing to share
their perspectives about what the job entailed and specifically what was needed to be
successful. Karen valued the opportunity to learn about some of the pitfalls that the
former co-presidents encountered such as time management and balancing academic
course loads. Additionally, they shared positive and negative aspects of the position and
the role of expectations. Karen offered,

Later on when I was looking to the co-president, I sent them e-mails. I sent

actually all of the co-presidents emails at the time or talked with them and

asked them what the job involved and how much time they thought I

would have to put into it, what kind of classes they took at the time and

how time management was. I really asked them a lot of questions and it

was really nice because Roger and Banti both at the time were graduating

and they took the time out to really sit down and talk with me or send me a

really long email that highlighted all the good and bad aspects of being a

co-president and so it really helped me make my decision in terms of what

to expect and what not to expect. You know whether or not it would be a
good idea considering my course load and all that kind of stuff.

36

Agrima highly valued the interaction with peer mentors on multiple levels
including dealing with issues and challenges she faced as a student in transition and
positional leader. Her peer mentor, a first year graduate student, previously held the co-
president position during his undergraduate years. They discuss academic problems and
the role of academics in her goals after college. Additionally, Agrima feels her peer
mentor provides insight about goal setting and suggestions about activities in which she
should participate. She appreciates the objectivity that her peer mentor maintains while
providing advice and guidance.

What I feel it to be a good peer mentor you need to identify with people on

many different levels. For instance with Jay, he interacted with me on a

student level, academics, the future, and why we are in college. He also

helps me think about priorities, different things I want to be active in, kind

of the external parts of college life and things like that. I think he can even

be objective and be able to give advice without being emotionally hurt or

bring expectations. When you are mentoring someone you need to be there

for them.

Agrima identifies two peers with whom she interacted over time. The first was her racial
ethnic student aide when she lived in a residence hall who encouraged her to apply for the
aide position the following academic year. Agrima agreed and sought his guidance on
how to fulfill the role. The advice included strategies for how to demonstrate support for
students with whom she worked. Through maintaining regular contact with her mentor,
she was further encouraged to assume the co-president role. Because her peer mentor had
experience as an aide and co-president, he provided first-hand knowledge Of the
responsibility involved in both roles, ultimately prompting her decision to serve. Another
peer Agrima credits successfully developed relationships with individuals both internal

and external to the racial and ethnic community. Learning from his experience, Agrima

commits herself to working on relationship-building skills. She acknowledges the benefit

37

of discussing with mentors her perspectives prior tO holding the role compared with those
while holding it. These perspectives coupled with the personal support she received from
her mentor helped Agrima feel prepared for leading.

With Jay, he has seen me kind of evolve over the course of a college
career, because he was my aide my sophomore year when I was over in
[the residence hall]. He always helped and encouraged me to become a
racial ethnic aide. He helped through the interview and things like that, so
he saw me go thru transitions from working with students and gave me
ideas about where I wanted to go, how I could work with people and still
become that racial ethnic aide. Then I kept in close contact with him
throughout being an aide. He helped me take the attitude to become Asian
American Alliance (AAA) co-president. So, he’s seen me truly evolve
with my ideas, and things like that. With Dario, it is how to connect with
the community better. Because as I mentioned before, that’s something I
have not mastered yet. It’s something I’m trying to work on, that’s just
with Dario. With lay it has been predominately other areas mainly, where
I was and what I envisioned prior to being an aide compared to now, how I
differ, how to balance things in my life, because of all the priorities and
emotional support.

As a student in an academic college where the racial and ethnic makeup of the
student body is primarily White, Jonathan valued his peer mentoring relationship with a
fellow student who was in the same academic college and shared a common racial
background. Jonathan often experienced feelings Of isolation and difference in
comparison to peers, and describes the awkwardness he felt being one of only a few
students-of-color in the classroom.

I would define peer mentoring as somebody who is someone you talk to.
It’s like you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what’s going
on. They are people too and they are willing to help you through the
process. With Karen, the way she was my mentor, she was my academic
mentor. [Social Science Residential College] is not very diverse and the
first thing I had noticed was that on a racial scale, there were two Chicano
Americans in the entire College, of like 1,300 students. It was so strange
to be in a classroom with two people-Of-color. It makes you realize that
you are different. Talking about that with Karen it was really beneficial. I

38

do think that Karen was a peer mentor to me. She was a fellow student and
had done this before.

Aidan differentiates between peer mentoring and other forms of mentoring
based on the type of advice one receives, e. g., peer mentors share more personal
and informal information and they Offer more uncensored advice about how to
adapt in the college environment both as leaders as well as students. Like some
others, he also feels that peer mentors need to be in more senior grades than their
mentees, which he articulates through his own experiences as a peer mentor.

I think to define it would have to be a person an upperclassman, a senior

student that a younger student could ask for guidance, advice that he

probably wouldn’t hear from a staff member. Things like tips for getting
along with people in an organization or navigating the university
bureaucracy or the best places to eat, hang out, and things like that. It
certainly would be valuable. I try to do that to my sister now that she’s

here. But I learned a lot of the tips and tricks through my leadership
positions.

Aidan maintains that upper class students have experiences that under class students have
not yet encountered, and feels that intervening early in a student’s college career provides
valuable guidance younger students need to navigate the college experience. “It’s
important because I think the sooner you catch on with how this place works the better
off you’ll be. A peer mentor has the experience that they can relate to you on what to do
and what not to do on how to survive around here. That’s the reason why I think a peer
mentor should be an upperclassman who has that experience and they have the network
to be able to relate to the younger classmen.”

Jay draws a distinction between friendship and mentoring among peers based on

differences in levels of experience. Friends are limited in that they experience situations

39

with peers at the same level of exposure to the issues, whereas peer mentors possess prior
knowledge that helps mentees arrive at a heightened understanding of a situation.

It’s hard to distinguish sometimes between the friends, just peers and peers
that would be considered mentors. I think that’s where the age or the
experience level comes into play. A lot of validity for somebody else who
has been there before or has gone thru something... They say I’ve gone
through something like this before; this is what I did trying to help another
student who would be a mentee. Then someone who is just a friend is
someone who you are going through it together for the first time.

Overall, mentoring experiences during turbulent times in both personal and
organizational contexts were easily recalled by participants. As positional leaders, they
emphasize the impact of emotional support and encouragement to engage in self-
exploration as outcomes of peer mentoring relationships. Beyond the personal realm,
participants networked with peers while grappling with leadership responsibilities within
the organization. Peer support networks served as sources of strength and wisdom from
which to draw.

Peer support providing personal support and prompting self-exploration

Personal support is present in dealing with family, culture, and health
issues. Participants who received support from former peer leaders described the
impact of having this support particularly during challenging times and of the
value of learning from former peer leaders’ experiences. Miguel explained,

It feels nice when you say to someone I have this problem and their like I
know exactly what you’re talking about, whether or not they do you know
their at least familiar with the problem. They’ve faced with the same
situation or had some experience that might help whether just listening or
being able to confide in them or get advice. Either way they got something
to Offer. Definitely sometimes conflicts arise, huge conflicts. Peer
mentoring like in this role, people really devote a lot Of time and emotion
into the position and a lot of harsh feelings when things don’t happen

40

certain ways people want them too. Definitely think that could hinder
some of the leadership roles having to deal with dissatisfied peers. I
definitely don’t find all the answers in this leadership role and really make
you evaluate everything at the university and in life. What do you want?
How do you handle your situation with people? How do you go about
business? How do you handle yourself in times of stress and conflict? It’s
definitely good for people, some people. It’s definitely not for everyone.

Participants also acknowledged the extensive commitment involved in
mentoring peers, and the challenges that sometimes exist. In addition to
organizational difficulties sometimes experienced, participants also talked about
their own personal journey of self exploration. Miguel writes,

You just really have to ready to handle a lot of responsibility and
consequences and what comes with that. Overall, day by day you learn so
much about you, yourself, how people see you, and how you interact with
others. It definitely defines you, too. People will always see you as
someone who held that leadership role, how did they do, were they
successful, did people like them or dislike them or what not. Helped you
learn a little bit more about yourself.

Sometimes, the personal journey for participants included exploring their cultural identity
with prior peer leaders. Jorge described individuals who helped him work through
personal difficulties with having two cultural backgrounds. Growing up, he primarily
claimed his White identity; however in college, he was exposed to peer mentors who
identified with his Mexican identity. Meaningful conversations with peer mentors] in the
community-based organization tied to his Mexican identity helped him embrace his
heritage and provided insight in dealing with personal family issues. Jorge explains,

Old school cats, yeah they are students; most of them are grad students.
They’ve been the biggest mentors that I’ve had. Before I came to campus.
I always tell people this, even though I was born in Mexico and I was
viewed as having a strong Mexican identity, I was having some identity
crisis when I came here. I identified myself as a Hispanic and sometimes I
claimed more that I wanted to be white. I see now that racism and

4l

oppression, I try to embrace that Spanish side. When I came, these guys
showed me to be proud of the struggles that they’ve been through. They
told me to always be proud of what you’re doing and the struggle you
know because it always means something in life of what you have to do.
Now I identify as a Chicano whereas before I didn’t identify as Mexican.
All of them are from Mexico. They took the time to sit down with me and
listened to some of my concerns. What is it that I need? What were some
of the challenges that I was facing as a student and they tried to give me
their points of view of how they dealt with their issues. Jose is Mexican.
His mom is White and his dad is Mexican. His step-dad is Black. So the
person who really mentored me about those issues was Jose. He said this
is how to deal with it. This is how you should deal with it.

Another participant, Jonathan, described discussions with his peer mentor that
enabled him to explore the roots of his identity and his personal perspectives about
societal issues, familiar relationships, and culture. He explains,

We would talk about issues, like my relationship with my grandmother. I
became so saddened when I came to the conclusion that the root of our
identity and everything we know about culture comes from your family.
My grandmother is the core of our culture. People say you have American
culture. You make your own culture. Culture is dynamic and variable.
Simple things like making paper cranes and realizing why you are doing
that. . .. Why the cherry blossoms are significant? I could also talk
about the WWII and learning Japanese and how important it was to be
given this ownership of Japanese. SO many have lost the language. The
first expectation is to conform to society. People have different problems.

In tumultuous times, positional leaders faced challenges with hostility about their
cultural identity from other students. Jose explains,

Well, it was pretty tumultuous in the beginning. I think that there were two

things that stood out in that time. One was the hostility that was directed

towards me in the beginning as a non-fraternity person. The other kids that

were on the C/LN e-board were very hostile towards me in the beginning.

They were very argumentative. We had several very loud disagreements in

the basement of the Union.

Another student discussed being helped by peers with personal challenges, which

affected his role as a positional leader in the racial and ethnic community. In addition to

42

encouragement, participants describe the personal support received from other positional
leaders within the community-based organization while enduring personal health
problems. For example, Jay shared, “One personal kind of experience that I had is that
the fall I was co-president I got shingles so I was really, really sick. I was basically lying
in bed and everybody was calling me and asking to see if I was doing well. I was resting
up and everything and when I showed up, everybody was mad because they said you’re
not supposed to do anything. We’ll take care of it. So my e-board got together and they
gave me flowers and a card and everything. I felt that was really sweet of them. That was
a personal thing that I felt was good.”

When asked to draw a visual image of peer support during turbulent
organizational times, Marcus explains that he sees a group of students organizing for a
cause. He states, “[Multicultural Affairs Office] is written across the top. One is an image
of the [university] administration building. Standing on the steps was a group of students
lined in front of the building. This is a scene of the [university] study-in. That signifies
my experience participating in that event.” While grappling with key organizational
challenges, Marcus visualizes moments where he and his peer mentors interact on a more
personal level. He says, “The second image is myself, [Darnell], and [Michael] sitting at
a cafe’ table eating. My relationship with those individuals influenced me to become a
leader. We broke bread together.”

Participants believe it is important to build deep relationships with mentees. They
express concern and care for the mentee yet, ask questions about that person’s role as a
peer leader as well as their personal enjoyment Ofthe experience. The personal

connection creates an open door policy for addressing problems in later stages of the

43

relationship. Agrima serves as a mentor and approaches mentoring from an emotionally
supportive perspective. She explains,

As my mentor role I made sure that I checked up on them to see if they
need anything here and there. I would try to be supportive, relatively
intrusive but not overly intrusive. There is so much more that is going
on so you need to be able to dig in there. As a mentor you need a certain
level of comfort with them so that people say you know is your e-board
acting right? Are you involved in things? Are you enjoying it? Do you
have any thoughts? Having that emotional support is what it takes to be a
mentor.

Peer leaders also served as sounding boards to current students with leadership
responsibilities. In addition to sharing prior leadership experiences, participants offered
insight on coping with challenges related to positional roles. Jorge states,

Peer mentoring is very important. Sometimes people are very afraid to
speak out and voice their concerns of what some of the issues are. When
you find somebody, a friendly person who is willing to listen to you, you
are able to get an individual’s opinion that has experience or who has gone
through some of the challenges that you are going through and gives you
an honest opinion. They say look at the bright side. This is what you can
do.

Peer support for organizational change

Some participants shared how they utilized insights of peer leaders from the
previous year to make major organizational decisions. One example was told by Juanita
about peer leaders organizing a leadership retreat to work on changing existing
community-based organizational policies. The leaders received much criticism from other
members who did not support the changes due to a desire to maintain tradition. As a
result, the current positional leaders were anxious and feared that their ideas would not be
embraced by other members. With the help and support of prior peer leaders, Juanita

explained how she were able to gain support from the broader membership,

44

Because when I came in, two weeks before we came back to school we
had a leadership meeting. It was actually like a retreat. It was two days and
we brought our leaders of the organizations that were in the
Chicano/Latino Network (C/ LN) last year to this meeting. It was a two
day retreat and we talked about issues and our visions of what we wanted
to do with the C/LN this year. We did all these great things and we were
up so late at night and we woke up to write all of these things. We totally
made a lot of amendments to the constitution. People especially the C/LN,
a lot of people they don’t like change. It usually takes a long time or they
don’t agree with it. People’s feelings get hurt. But it needed to be done
because we needed a solid foundation. We made all these amendments and
then we said we’re just going to implement them because they elected us.
We have the authority and we’re going to implement them. And people
were like, it says in the constitution that you can’t do that and C/LN has
always been done this way historically. It’s scary because we knew it
would take time but at the same time we knew the changes needed to be
made. It was finally ratified and all of the members got it ratified so that
was exciting. But that was really scary because we didn’t know how they
were going to react to our amendments. But it worked out.

Juanita recounts her experience both as a former and current leader who mentored
an existing leader on how to approach change within a community-based organization.
Because of the former leader’s prior leadership experience, Juanita trained the current
leadership in parliamentary procedures and community organizing efforts. She explains,

We had our Chicano/Latino Coordinator. He was at the whole retreat and
he helped to facilitate it. We brought in a couple of facilitators, one was
Jose and had a lot of experience with leading and organizing and getting
involved that way. He is in the Master’s program in Social Work. He was
actually a co-chair [the previous year]. He just did a lot of wonderful
things. He’s a real activist. He’s a part of the [Mexican Activist Group
which] is huge on campus. He was really excited that we were making all
these changes and he was for it. He was helping us with that and then we
also brought a speaker. But it was about parliamentary procedures and
Robert’s Rules of Order and he came from [another university]. That was
good. We could train our leadership.

The need to advocate for the community on issues of individual oppression and

social justice emerged as one factor in organizational change. Jorge explains,

45

I didn’t get involved until I got involved with these guys [in the Mexican
Activist Group]. I knew what it was to advocate for the community, to go
out there and say don’t oppress our people, go out there and participate in
marching. I wasn’t involved in [another Latino organization] until I met
these guys. They pretty much told me the ins and outs of what they’ve
accomplished and primarily student activism and howl got involved. I
think this transition was the point that I decided I’m going to get involved
with my community because of everything they’ve been through and there
are challenges that haven’t been resolved.

Jose’s story as a non-traditional student trying to reconnect with the community-

based organization in which he was involved ten years prior exemplifies commitment to

organizational change and social justice. Upon his return, Jose found that the community-

based organization had shifted its focus from a political base to a more social base.

Frustrated with the lack of political activism, he worked to get re—elected to the

community-based organization in a positional leadership role. Jose explains,

It usually ended in me telling them that I really didn’t give a [fudge] what
they thought. At one point even really saying and not so much I think
that this is really important based on what I just said. It wasn’t so much
that I was trying to take over what was going on. I felt that there were
important things happening politically in the Chicano Latino community
that they were not addressing. I wanted us as a group to address them.
They were much more interested in organizing dances and parties and
stuff like that. That’s cool. I don’t have anything against dances and
parties but what about the other stuff too.

Peer efforts to respond to organizational and political crises

Current positional leaders faced challenging situations within community-based

organizations. Problems included leader resignations, membership apathy, and limited

resource availability. As a peer mentor to other leaders, Jay shares an assessment of the

organization’s leadership efforts. He states,

I felt like we had a very steady attendance at the Asian American Alliance
(AAA) that year. Like it really never fell below 30 people and 30 was low

46

considering it would be during like finals or the week before finals or
something like that. I felt like we did a really good job even though we
had a smaller e-board than usual and having programs that people wanted
to attend and like to attend. We tried to vary it up with academic and
social programs. Ones that we offered food at we tried to use all of our
resources that way and we actually ended up budget wise, we ended up
really well for the year. I think we had an excess. I feel like we gave
everything the community needed without overextending ourselves and
without overextending our budget. I thought that was a big success
programming wise.

Positional leaders sought advice in facing different challenges from former peer
leaders and other advisors who held positions during their undergraduate years in
college. Karen explains,

We went to [Madden] because she was our acting advisor at the time and
she really helped us get together and everything and I had been doing a lot
of research on the APA community and everything so I actually took time
out to sit down with Jonathan. . .I sat down with him and I really tried to
explain to him and tell him and just say Jonathan look it’s the fact that you
could be... even though you are a [student government] rep on funding
board, you’re APA and you can’t get rid of that. You can’t get rid of the
fact that you did lead this whole kind of thing regardless of whatever your
reasons are, but you just don’t say no to other groups. [Madden] was there
supporting me and kind of reinforcing the idea of not being mean. I think
that [Madden] was really instrumental of bringing the [Racial and Ethnic
Coalition] groups together and really helping Jonathan understand that the
role an APA faces, once you’re associated with the community, and how
that plays within the greater university itself.

Peers provided additional support to current positional leaders who sought to
challenge the existing organization. Though controversial in nature, one positional leader
accepted the challenges of filing a formal request for information with the institution. He
recalls disagreements with other peer leaders but provided support to newer positional

leaders throughout the situation. Jose explains,

47

I know also too I think being quite a bit older than some of them, than all of them.
Even the person who was the advisor for the university at the time, [Maricel]. I
think even with [Maricel] I’m probably maybe like ten or twelve years older than
she is. In coming from a strong organizational background, you know I’ve had a
lot experience over these guys. It wasn’t hard really for me to dominate the whole
group. I tried very hard not to do that and I think I was successful but at the same
time I wanted to get certain things going. Just in the beginning I finally got them
to agree to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the Multicultural
Affairs Office. When they got that back, I think that they were very shocked by
what was in it. I think it was interesting because in the meeting before I got them
to agree to it I said to them, I said okay so you guys are the representatives for the
Latino community on campus, undergraduate community on campus, how much
does the university give you each year. Nobody knew. I said so you’re here trying
to tell me that all you smart ass Mexicans who are supposed to be getting all this
money and doing all this stuff don’t even know how much money you have in the
bank. Now I told them, I don’t know about you guys but that doesn’t sound like
leadership to me. That doesn’t sound professional to me. That doesn’t sound like
fiscal responsibility to me. That was kind of a turning point.”

Current peer leaders faced difficult decisions as political challenges arose in the
community-based organization including one specific controversy with a US. national
political leader speaking at the university’s commencement ceremonies. Because of the
speaker’s political affiliation, members of the community—based organization expected
their peer leaders to take a stance publicly. Miguel, a current peer mentor, disagreed with
his counterpart and was forced to make a difficult decision. He explains,

There was the conflict with the National Security Advisor coming and
when that took place you had a lot of people opposing and some people
even supporting and it was commencement and some people were
graduating, some people weren’t interested. It was very challenging. It
really put the co-chairs to the test as to what are they going to do, or how
is Chicano/Latino Network (C/LN) going to act. It was my concern that
we wouldn’t take our position to offend people. It might have been the
safer way out, I thought it was the right thing to do so you know there was
conflict with the other co-chair at the time and a lot of members was
saying that C/LN should do something. At that time I felt that it was not
C/LN’s role to be that politically active. Definitely support any members

48

that were willing to protest [the National Security Advisor’s] speech and
definitely a lot of members were involved, some organizations of C/LN
were involved, but C/LN as a whole was just supporting its members.

Miguel struggled with finding balance during political turbulence and the difficulty of
pleasing multiple constituencies in his peer leader role, sharing,

In the politics of things, what should Chicano/Latino Network (C/LN) do?
How to keep people happy? Keeping members back? What do students
want to see? How do you go about pleasing people and doing what you
think is right. What you feel you should do? There’s a lot to think about...
It was vague. What are the roles of C/LN besides supporting students?
Does it have a secondary role as far as supporting certain causes on
campus and whether it’s had that position in the past talking to people
about that, my peer mentors? What is its future or what not and present
role?

Faced with opposing perspectives from the membership and his co-chair, Miguel sought
advice from prior peer leaders and the community-based organization’s advisor. He
explains, “I went to a couple Older co-chairs and definitely our advisor at the time. Just
talking with friends and basically dealing it out with them telling them how, like I felt
what they thought if C/LN did that and what not. Just talking with people and asking
them what the right way to go through this is.” Receiving advice from his mentors
provided support to Miguel.

One participant who served as president of the organization described pressures
from the administration during an African American student sit-in. Peers served as a
sounding board and a source of feedback during these challenging and complex times for
Marcus who recalls,

I remember there was a time when an exceptional number of Black

students had been kicked out of school for failing to perform

academically. Statistically it was a very high number. [Black Student

Union] called a meeting together and we had to figure out how we should
respond. We brought organizations together and met. I remember there

49

were a lot of folks there, United One leaders (adversarial competitors),
aides, caucus leaders, etc. We came up with an idea to hold a
demonstration to bring to attention the fact that many Black students were
retired from the university. We decided to have a funeral not for the
students, but for their [university] diplomas. We discussed time and date,
what we would do. I remember everyone was looking to me about what
we were going to do. I provided the broad outline and I remember asking
everyone if they were with me. They said, whatever you say. I remember
the next day; I got a call from students saying they weren’t going to do it.
There were two separate protests at the same protest. There was the
funeral (associated with me). My friend videotaped it. The United One
protest was a [college] flag burning. It was flame resistant so it didn’t go
very well. It was a great learning experience. At first I thought it was a
pretty good reflection of what goes on in the larger world. How
competitors will jockey for leadership and influence. But on the other
hand, I was able towards the end of my involvement to talk to new
students at the beginning of the [Black Student Union] reception. I
encouraged them to get involved and the value of getting involved, the
pitfalls. I used this as an example of what to consider and what to know
before working together. I remember other leaders were there and
acknowledged that it was silly. It came full circle.

Injustices that affected the broader racial and ethnic community external to the
campus were also addressed. For this community, people were being exploited as migrant
workers. Jorge describes,

Primarily it dealt with identity. For example, I saw the marching not only
negotiating to get what you wanted, but they showed me why is it that you
march and why is it that we protest to get people to say this is what we
want and say we’re not going away until we do it. Now I see the benefits
of that now. Nowadays, we are marching with [the Farm Labor Group] to
boycott. After eight years, they finally signed a contract to unionize 8,000
workers in North Carolina. We picketed outside of [grocery store]. None
of the executives from [grocery store] got a hold of [the Farm Labor
Group]. He told people to call and voice their concerns. Execs asked to
please not have picketers outside of [grocery store] because it was hurting
their business. That’s when my whole perspective changed.

By virtue of their role representing their respective racial and ethnic communities,
current positional leaders often made difficult decisions about resources which also

affected other racial and ethnic communities. In one instance, Karen mentored another

50

positional leader who made unpopular decisions in a student government setting. She

states,

The bad thing that turned out good was during the year, there was a whole
big issue of the money for the [Racial and Ethnic Coalition (REC)]
through funding board with [student government] when Jonathan [student
government representative] got himself nominated and involved as a
representative to funding board but he was still seen kind of in the
community as a Asian Pacific American (APA) rep even though he wasn’t
an official APA rep on funding board. When the Native American Student
Association (NASA) came and submitted their budget for funding board
there was a lot of controversy and everything. Jonathan kind of led the full
thing against NASA and what ended up happening is Jonathan was kind of
the ring leader of why NASA’s proposal was wrong and all these kind of
things so our Asian Pacific American rep, the [Black Student Union] rep,
and the Chicano/Latino Network rep all voted no against the proposal for
NASA. It caused huge controversy and everybody was upset and
everybody was mad. All the co-presidents went to me and we tried to get
everybody to see what the root of this problem was. I think it got the
[REC] back on board together. It’s unfortunate that it happened, but I
think it increased communication and it increased something that had been
lacking among the groups. There’s still a lot of leftover feelings right now
because of that but I think it really started it. It really made everybody
reflect on really like we can’t let the university tear us apart ‘cause we
look stupid. We looked completely stupid and everybody agreed on that.
That was kind of the bad situation.

During personal and professional crisis, formal positional leaders found solace

from their peers. They gained valuable lessons of resilience from advice and stories

shared by former peer leaders. Former peer leaders contributed to their leadership

development.

POSITIONING

Theme 2: Peers holding formal leadership positions in their racial and ethnic

community influenced participants to assume positional leadership roles with

increasing responsibility in their respective community-based organization.

5I

 

“I drew a picture of
[Roger]; he was one of the
reasons why I ran for co-
president. He was the co-
president before. Very few
of them [are involved]
when it comes to giving
political advice and
standing up for our rights
or our dignity that a lot of
people are not willing to
do that. The general
feeling that I get was that
if I didn 't do it no one else
will. ” -Dario

 

 

 

 

(Figure 2. Hand drawn by participant, Dario)

The process of positioning involves meaningful influence from both formal and
informal peers in racial and ethnic community-based organizations that resulted in
participants taking on positional leadership roles with increasing responsibility.
Participants described early interactions that stimulated initial involvement in their
identified racial and ethnic community. Some peer relationships developed prior to
attending college, while others were established at the onset of their first-year in college.
Other participants described early interactions with peers that stimulated involvement in
identified racial and ethnic communities during the latter portion of their academic
careers. Additionally, the institution created formal peer support efforts that encouraged
participants to become actively involved in community-based organizations. Some
participants found that formal mentoring efforts had a positive influence on their
leadership development while others believed that this approach was less effective than

52

informal peer mentoring. In these situations, peers who were not formally part of an
institutional support program, but who willingly shared their college leadership
experiences in their respective racial and ethnic community were identified as key
influences for students to assume roles with increasing responsibility.

As participants described their initial exposure to the racial and ethnic community
with which they identify, they often referred to a particular individual or a group of
individuals who, after making initial contact, continued to benefit them personally and
professionally. These individuals invited the study participants to attend general meetings
of the community-based organization, welcome receptions for associated organizations
within the racial and ethnic community, and other events that brought racial and ethnic
community members and their organizational leaders together. It was at these events
where participants were introduced to peers who either held formal leadership positions
in the associated organizations nested in the community or who held formal positions on
the executive board of the community-based organization. Peers in formal leadership
positions were seen as successful in community-based organizations. As relationships
with these individuals developed, participants were encouraged to take on formal
positional roles within the community-based organization and increasing levels of
responsibility over time.

Early interactions stimulated immediate involvement in the community

Peer leaders intentionally reached out to new students on campus to create
meaningful connections with the hopes of capturing their interest in becoming involved
in the campus community. These interactions equipped participants with a sense of

belonging to a group ofindividuals who were actively involved in the racial and ethnic

53

community with which they identified. Jorge describes his initial arrival on campus as a
freshman and meeting other students at welcome receptions.

When I came here on campus they kind of took me under their wing. And some of
those friends that I talked to in the room were Racial Ethnic Student Aides so they
always told me what was going on campus until one time they came to my room
and they gave me a brochure and told me about Chicano Latino Network (C/LN).
They told me this is where a lot of Latinos come and share experiences and meet
new friends. So that’s how I became involved with C/LN during my freshman
year. One of the mentors and Racial Ethnic Student Aides said you should come
along and meet other Latinos on campus, and ever since then I’ve been involved.

In addition to becoming directly involved in their racial and ethnic community
organizations, participants identified involvement in campus activities apart from these
groups which prepared them for leadership responsibilities within the community-based
organization. Miguel describes a positive and helpful interaction with a peer who served
in a formal role as a racial ethnic aide. In his initial days on campus, Miguel became
interested in getting involved because of a peer leader who described details of the
community-based organizational structure and the opportunities available in being
involved. After learning the organizational ropes from his peers, Miguel decided to run
for the co-chair position in the Latino community organization. “I had heard about
[C/LN] as a freshman thru my racial ethnic aide who was Faina and so I went there.
Sophomore year I held a position as residence hall association representative and then
junior year I went for co-chair position.” Participants acknowledge the impact of those
who held other kinds of roles on campus (e.g., racial/ethnic aide) outside the
organization. These individuals inspired mentees to join various organizations and take

on leadership roles.

54

Musheer recalls the connection he made with a racial ethnic aide, also known as a
community aide, living in his residence hall that invited and accompanied him to an
Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) community organizational meeting. Musheer’s
interactions with organizational members and leaders at the meeting reinforced his desire
to become actively involved. Musheer states,

It was my spring semester of my freshmen year, and it was my aide in [my
residence hall] brought me out, told me about that there was a meeting and
if I wanted to come, they would provide transportation and everything.
That’s how it initially started just by going to the meetings and then
towards the end of the year I got nominated for secretary. I ran for
secretary and got it. I was secretary of last year and now this year I’m Vice
President.

Participants noted the influence of peers sometimes dated back prior to attending
college and continued throughout their undergraduate education. For example, Cesar
recalls numerous peers in various roles who influenced him to assume positional roles in
the organization including a high school peer who, in college, introduced him to the co-
presidents of the APIA community-based organization as a freshman. Cesar states, “I was
introduced to Roger by Ryan who I knew in my junior year of high school and then I
just kept in contact. He introduced me. The interaction was very friendly. . .it was very
friendly and outgoing.” The co-presidents immediately took interest in Cesar and
introduced him to the APIA community-based organization and the broader APIA
community on campus. Cesar recalls,

I think I got involved through meeting the previous presidents. I got introduced to

Asian American Alliance (AAA) through my freshman year I believe when Roger

was president. Roger and Bandi were co-presidents. I met Roger at the welcome

reception and from there I got to know [him], we hung out, and he introduced me
to AAA].

55

 

a;

1”,

fl.-

Developing relationships with and gaining insight from two of the most visibly active
students in community-based organizations and the broader racial and ethnic community
provided Cesar with an in—depth perspective of involvement. His experiences of early
contacts resulting in long-standing peer mentoring relationships were similar to other
participants’ experiences.

Participants also noted the positive impression they received from current
positional leaders while attending institutionally sponsored events for new students.
Jonathan described interactions with a former co-president of the organization that
greatly influenced him to become involved. Experiencing fear and hesitation as a new
student, he found comfort and guidance from her. “The former co-president, Karen, had
volunteered to mentor me since the very first year my freshman year because I was very
scared of coming to [the university] and I had met her at [the family program].” Prior to
holding the co-presidency, Jonathan served as a representative of the organization to the
student government. It was there he developed skills and experiences that he believes
prepared him for the co-presidency. Jonathan says, “Another reason that I ran for co-
president is because as a former executive board member I had gained the essential
experiences that you need to have the co-presidency, the knowledge that I can share. I
was the former student government representative for [the Asian American
organization].” Participants expressed increasing comfort in assuming the highest levels
of responsibility within community-based organizations as a result of encouragement

they received from peer mentors.

56

Early interactions stimulated involvement in the racial and ethnic community during the
latter portion of their college careers

Sometimes, early interactions with peer mentors led to decisions for involvement
later in a student’s undergraduate career. For example, unlike many of the other
participants, Juanita was averse to becoming involved during her first year in college.
Feeling overwhelmed, homesick, and an overall disconnect with the campus, she was
completely uninvolved outside of the academic arena. “My freshman year, I hated [the
university] because it was so big and overwhelming and I was like I don’t know. So I
went home every single weekend. I didn’t want to get to know anyone. I didn’t want to
go to anything, no organizations, anything.” After repeated invitations from other
organizationally-active Latino students, Juanita began attending various student
organizations affiliated with the Latino community. She educated herself by attending
programs, seeking interaction with peers, and learning multiple facets of how the racial
and ethnic community operated. These experiences equipped her with the knowledge and
exposure to assume a leadership role within the Latino community on campus. Juanita
explains,

My sophomore year, I started going to different organizations. I went to C/LN and
I met a lot of people. Going to C/LN made me want to get involved on campus.
With that I took off and last year I was going to five different programs a day, like
even if it was for half an hour just to show my face and then getting to know
people and seeing how C/LN works and all the organizations within it. After
going through there and showing my face to all these organizations I was elected.
I don’t think I would have ran for C/LN because it’s such as big position and I
was graduating but I was elected. Now I’m so happy that I did.

As a result of consistently supportive interactions with peer leaders in their racial and
ethnic community-based organizations, participants felt confident and ready to assume

increasing leadership responsibility over time.

57

Formal (institutionally-dcvised) peer encouragement to become actively involved in the
community

Participants spoke of the importance of those who held formal peer support
positions. These institutionally designated peer support positions are occupied by full-
time undergraduate students-of-color who are intended to serve as visible role models.
The roles were created to provide academic, cultural, social, and community outreach
activities; assist students in revolving issues and concerns by providing information and
by referring students to other appropriate campus agencies; and assist students through
informal consulting both personal and academic in nature. Racial and ethnic community
aides, who assess the needs of students-of-color residing in their assigned residence hall,
are examples of this kind of formal peer support role. For example, Jorge was encouraged
to become involved in the Latino community organization by community aides. Aidan
describes early interactions as a freshman with an older student who was as an aide in his
residence hall. This Native American aide helped Aidan overcome his initial anxiety
about attending a racial and ethnic community-based organizational meeting. Aidan
states,

When I was a freshman, I lived in the [residence hall] and there our Native

Racial Ethnic Aide came and sought me out and brought me to the first

[Native American Student Association] meeting because I would have

been scared to do so otherwise. She told me that it was a really open

environment and it was a way to make all the freshman feel welcome.

Jay credits the connection with his community aide in helping with transition issues he
faced as a new student on campus during a time when most students had already formed
relationships with other students. He explains, “At the time, my aide was somebody who

reached out to me, and took me to some Asian American Alliance (AAA) meetings and

[Filipino American organization] meetings and that’s how I got involved.” This

58

exemplifies value for formal peer mentoring particularly for students who have made
minimal connections with other students.

As an entering first-year student Dario was encouraged to attend a racial
and ethnic community meeting by a community aide whom he met at an
admissions function. Dario states,

I got involved in my freshman year. There was an announcement at the first Asian

American Alliance (AAA) meeting that there was an open position on the AAA e-

board. Dina, she was a student and I talked to her at [an APIA family program]. I

talked to her about it and she’s the one who told me I should get involved with

AAA. So at the first meeting I didn’t care what the position was, I just wanted it. It

ended up being the student assembly position.

As a first year student, Karen recalls interactions with peers she met at an
institutionally-sponsored minority orientation program with whom she could closely
identify because of shared interests. These community aides were actively involved in
four of the largest student-of-color communities on campus including the African
American, Asian Pacific Islander American, Chicano and Latino, and Native American.
Another community aide in particular made a personal connection with Karen and
encouraged her to become a member of an Asian American sorority, which was actively
involved in the Asian American community. Karen was influenced by Mica’s
involvement in the community and saw herself being able to make contributions as well.
Karen explains, “Mica was actually one of the people I got close to, bonded with or
whatever. When I came to school they were kind of looking out for me. I pledged [the
sorority] and became a member of [the sorority] and that just like threw me into all kinds
of Opportunities within the APA community.” Karen met Mica for the first time at

Orientation but was inspired to pledge in the same sorority when Karen returned to

campus in the fall semester.

Persistent contacts initiated by formal peer mentors were viewed positively by
participants. For example, Jonathan describes the positive impression he developed from
his community aide’s multiple attempts to connect with him. These efforts prompted
Jonathan to find his assigned community aide, which ultimately led to developing a
meaningful peer relationship. Jonathan states,

I think it was also through my [community aide] at the time. She hosted

some things. She sent some e-mails about the Asian American Alliance

(AAA). I heard about it from her. The interaction with my [community

aide], I didn’t get to meet her when she did rounds. She left a note with her

number. So I went down and knocked on her door. We were just talking
from there.
Contacts were made through various mediums including e-mails, voicemails, and
face-to-face interactions.

Other participants emphasized the connection between establishing
individual relationships with formal peer mentors and strengthening involvement
in the broader racial and ethnic community. Mia recalls a formal peer mentor who
invited her to attend an organizational activity where she developed a lasting
impression of Chicano/Latino involvement on campus. This impression motivated
her to stay involved in the organization.

She was my racial ethnic aide. . ., well minority aide back in the day. She

came to our room. I was rooming with this girl named Endie so it’s kind of

like easy for her to meet with us and she invited us to lunch and stuff and

so we got to really know her and she was really cool. She invited us to go

to C/LN one day and so we did. When we went there at first it was kind of

like a whole bunch of Chicano Latinos all in one room was kind of

impressive and it seemed like a lot of fun so we gradually started going all
the time. That was my freshman year.

Most participants described interactions with formal peer mentors as meaningful

despite the highly structured interaction, which seemed less natural. At the same time,

60

some participants perceive formal peer mentoring as less effective or less genuine
compared to informal peer mentoring due to the “forced” nature of the interaction.

Informal (student initiated) peer encouragement to become actively involved in the
community

Peers who were not formally part of an institutionally-devised support program,
but who willingly shared leadership experiences in their respective racial and ethnic
community were seen as key influences by participants in assuming positions with
increasing responsibility. For example, Miguel identified his sister as a peer who
influenced him due to the closeness in age. Ile described how she shared her college
experiences of involvement in the Latino community. His sister’s insight and
encouragement motivated Miguel to want to become more involved in the community-
based organization even prior to his coming to college. Miguel explains,

Basically, this is my sister was just a big influence on my life and

taught me to get involved and do good things. By her doing good things

she showed me a good example and like what I would like to do or an

option for me was to get involved. Growing up learning about her

university experiences pretty much helped me decide what I could do. She

was very involved at her school. Just hearing about her getting involved in

running her programs. . .and trying to get people involved and aware of

what was going on and doing all the things like that, just always hearing

about it. I thought that was great in what she was doing. It kind of made

me want to do the same thing, encouraging students and bringing things to

people’s attention both students and faculty and administration.

In addition to being influenced by peers in formal mentoring roles, Jay also
identified informal peers who influenced him to become more involved in the racial and
ethnic community, and drew a visual symbol representing the influence of older students
on his successful leader transition on campus. Jay acquired knowledge about valuable

resources, received guidance about personal and social concerns, and developed a

network of personal support from his informal peer mentors. He explains.

6I

This outer circle is my friends and family and then a lot of that would be
the older the students that influenced me. Kyle really influenced me to
take on more leadership roles within the community. Even I didn’t even
have it in mind that I could be the co-president until one of the co-
presidents said that you have the potential, guiding me I guess, and
bringing me out to different social events, you know that I am so shy but
that kind of stuff really helping me find myself. That’s like my
[community aide]; she was a mentor to me because she was helping me to
try, gave me the tools and resources, and showed me the different
communities I could get involved in and different groups.

Assuming increasing levels of responsibility within their identified racial and ethnic
community

Participants were motivated by observing their peers who accepted increasing
levels of responsibility throughout their college careers. Participants described the
benefits of holding different roles within their racial and etImic community organization
with increasing responsibility. For example, Jorge started as a member, actively attended
meetings, volunteered at various community events, and eventually assumed increasing
responsibility in the Latino community organization. He recalls, “My first year, I was
without an e-board position. I was just a member. Then my second year I started taking
on more responsibility on the e-board. My second. year, I was the [residence hall
association] representative. My third year I was Vice-Chair. And this last year as Co-
Chair.” These roles within the organization exposed him to various aspects of it and
prepared him to take on increased responsibility much like his peer counterparts. Jorge
further maintains that leadership positions in the organization should be held by someone
with prior experience that has prepared them for the role. He explains, “I’ve never seen a
freshman as a chair. They are involved in other positions. In the mind of the membership,
the chair should be somebody who has been involved for at least two years to take on a

leadership role. Generally you see individuals from other organizations who want to fill

 

llll

pii

these positions. Sometimes you see individual members who want to fill these roles.”
Increasing responsibilities within community-based organizations provided exposure and
insight to multiple facets of leadership. These responsibilities enabled participants to
understand various issues related to the organization including cultural dynamics and
promoting to the larger institutional community.

Another participant’s constant interaction with other members of the community
empowered her to run for a leadership position, which she previously viewed as
unattainable. Juanita expanded her involvement in the community by holding other
positional roles with affiliated organizations in addition to serving as co-chair of the
community-based organization. For example, she serves as chair of an organization that
focuses on Latinos in her academic major. Ethnically, she identifies as Puerto Rican and
serves as treasurer of a separate student organization primarily focused on Puerto Rican
culture. Lastly, the Latino community created a mentoring program supporting first-year
students in which she serves as a peer mentor, complementing the formal community aide
position created by the institution. In each case, Juanita identified peers who influenced
her to assume these roles.

Participants were encouraged by peer mentors to become vocal in the community-
based organization, which resulted in strengthening their communication skills. Mia
increasingly spoke in meetings and viewed herself as someone who could provide
solutions to problems that the organization faced. Her vocal presence at meetings was
quickly recognized by peers, which stimulated her interest in running for a leadership

position within the organization. She went from member to co-chair within a year.

63

Receiving positive feedback and reactions from peers, Mia felt that she would be
supported if she ran for an elected position. She states,

It was interesting because I was just going to meetings and I kept voicing
my concerns and when you voice a concern, I always thought you should
have a solution to back it up with. I’d have solutions that they could
probably use as an e-board and they recommended that I go for co-chair. ..
from going from a member to co-chair was huge for me but I decided to
try it with nothing to lose so I did and got the position.

Within these community—based organizations, experience over time is perceived as highly
valuable. Community members are indoctrinated with the philosophy that values the
contributions that student leaders make over an extended period of time. As a result, these
student leaders maintain a high level of credibility amongst their peers within the
community. As a student already involved in the community holding one position,
Agrima was encouraged to run for co-president. Lack of gender representation among
potential candidates motivated her to run for the position, as well. The outgoing co-
presidents solidified her interest in assuming greater responsibility. She describes the
influence her peers had on her decisions, explaining,

I’ve been an aide for a year and a half prior to this year and so I had the
opportunity to help other students. During elections last year there were no
girls running so Dario and Jay asked me to run on the day of elections, a
little reluctant but I kind of handled the choice anyway so I kind went for
it. They even asked me for a while to run and I ended up getting it. To run
to be frankly honest was because they needed reps. There are no other
girls running to give people a choice and that type of thing. It has always
been in the back of my mind because I had held these types of positions
when I was in high school and that’s something I wanted to carry on into
college and so the Opportunity is there so I went for it. It was both Dario
and Jay but it was more so Dario. [He] was (co-president), Jay was not,
but he was the co-president the year before that. At that time Jay, was just
an active member, and he was a [senior community aide] so he was quite
active within the community.

64

 

Lt“!

For other students, the dynamics within their respective racial and ethnic
community called for individuals to assume greater responsibility. Marcus’ decision to
assume the presidency resulted from an unusual situation in his community. The
overarching community-based organization, in large part, had fallen apart and it was
through the efforts of a group of active students that it was resurrected. Marcus recalls,

I had been very active in the student community for the Black student

activism, minority aide, Black caucus president, active in study-in. After

study-in there was a feeling, a need to resurrect a defunct [Black Student

Union]. The black student leaders were looking for a way to maintain and

institutionalize it. A committee established to resurrect BSA and choose a

president. I was interested because it seemed like a logical step to my
previous activity. I interviewed and they chose me.

Marcus’ experience exemplifies momentum created by his interaction with peers while
advocating to the administration for issues that affected students in their community.

Influenced by visible leadership roles of their peers

Some participants were inspired by current positional leaders to become more
vocal leaders on behalf of student concerns on campus. For example, Miguel viewed
himself as a role model to other students who might be interested in serving the
community. “I think wanting to take that leadership role, wanting to express my opinion
and in as many settings as possible and wanting to be the voice of everyone. I wanted to
be an example to the university of what Latinos on this campus can be and what we
think.” Despite upcoming challenges, one participant found his desire to affect the
broader racial and ethnic community exceeded his own personal, academic, and social
needs. He observed former leaders in action and spoke with them about issues affecting
the community. Encouraged by what he witnessed, Cesar assumed various positions

within the community.

65

Seeing Roger and Bandi at that time, I wanted to take a leadership role

that I’d be able to make a difference and to increase change in the

community. It was my second year as an aide and my third year as Vice-

president of Asian American Alliance (AAA). The experiences through

the aide position were very similar. I knew that I wanted to increase the

awareness of the community. I wanted to take another leadership role.

Rico and Roger were still here and talking with them, I asked him should I

take a position like this. Roger’s response was yeah I think this would be

good for you even though you were an aide you’ve had that leadership

position as well. Rico on the other hand said, are you crazy? Aren’t you

doing too much? I think it was taking the vice-president role was to help

me increase [Asian American cultural] awareness and I wanted to help the

community more.

Cesar received both encouragement and discouragement from peers to assume other
leadership positions. He was encouraged because of potential contributions he could
make to the organization. His peer mentors placed great confidence in Cesar’s abilities to
maintain balance in multiple aspects of his life including academics, leadership, and
personal relationships. Conversely, he was discouraged by peers to assume another
leadership position because of their concern for his academic well-being. Cesar’s peer
mentors attempted to help him avoid the pitfalls of taking on too much additional
responsibility within the organization.

Participants also described how peers planted the idea of running for
organizational leadership positions in their minds. Encouraged by a returning student
leader, Dario ran for a position within the community-based organization and was
elected. He intended to gradually become more active, hoping in the future to serve as
vice-president of the organization. After being selected as an alternate for a community
aide position, Dario redirected his focus towards another role in the organization. He

found greater affirmation from an older student who served as co—president of the

organization, and encouraged him to run for the co-presidency. Dario explains,

66

I actually didn’t want to become co-president because I was working on

my sophomore year, which it meant I had to run as a freshman. That first

year of Asian American Alliance (AAA) end of the year I ended up

running for co-president. That was totally not my intention at all. I wanted

to be vice president. I just wanted to program for AAA. It was the day of

elections and I was ready to run for Vice President. The co-president at the

time, Roger pulled me to the side and looked at the rest of the people who

were running for co-president. He said, “Dario you got to run for it”. I said

Roger I’m not ready. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a freshman. Why?

He said don’t worry about it, you’re ready. So I ran. I threw out my speech

and I adlibbed. I think I talked more about my experiences in high school

than I did about my experiences in college because I really didn’t have any

college experience at that time and I was elected. It turned out really well.

Dario reflects positively on the experience as co-president during his sophomore year,
which motivated him to return to the position a second year. In a drawing during the
interview, he displays the former co-president’s influence on him, recalling, “I drew a
picture of Roger; he was one of the reasons why I ran for co-president. He was the co-
president before. There are two things: Roger pushing me ahead and then there’s me
working against that apathy. Because the general feeling that I get was that if I didn’t do
it no one else will.” Dario remained as co-president for two consecutive years because he
felt a sense of personal commitment to Roger and a broader interest in addressing issues
of apathy in the community.

Karen identified older students as peer mentors within the community who served
as co—presidents of the umbrella organization and presidents of other affiliated
organizations within the APIA community. She notes, “I’m friends with the older
members of the community. The co-presidents and presidents of the other organizations
at the time when l was like a freshman and a sophomore. That would be like Roger,

Bandi, and people from other communities. I can’t think of everyone right now. But they

were really the ones that encouraged me the most I guess towards APA stuff. So I

67

consider them all mentors.” These students were identified as key peer influences
because of a willingness to share their experiences while holding leadership positions.
Hearing their analysis of leadership experiences, Karen gained valuable insights into the
expectations of formal leadership roles in the organization. Peer mentors shared
perspectives based on hindsight and as a result, the participants became more confident in
assuming roles with increasing responsibility.

Overall, participants emphasized early interactions that stimulated their short- and
long-term involvement in the community. Participants who assumed formal leadership
roles emphasized the value of increasing levels of responsibility both internal and
external to the community-based organizations. They received formal and informal peer
encouragement to become actively involved in the community and were empowered by
visible peer leaders to seek positions that they previously viewed as unattainable. Lastly,
some participants were exposed to visible aspects of leadership within their respective

community-based organizations.

GENERATIVITY
Theme 3: Generativity occurs when former positional leaders in the racial and
ethnic community-based organization serve as peer mentors to current positional

leaders, who in turn serve as peer mentors to emerging positional leaders.

68

 

0 , “There is one person that
\ has always helped

somebody else and another
person has helped
\ somebody else. Those
0 ,_..—-—-—-'— / people in the past helped
/ bring so many of these

people in talking to them
a / and helping them

’ understanding what we do
and how to do it. They
brought me to where I am
I today. ” -Cesar

 

 

 

(Figure 3, Hand drawn by participant, Cesar)

The process of generativity of former leaders mentoring current leaders who in turn
mentor emerging leaders is a dynamic process. Four areas of generativity emerged. Former
leaders mentor current students, providing knowledge and insight that inform their roles as
current positional leaders. Current leaders mentor emerging leaders who are ofien new to
the group, passing on knowledge and insight about the community organization. Current
leaders also often continue seeking mentoring from former positional leaders as they
encounter new situations. Lastly, leadership regeneration evolves over time based on
increasing levels of influence. This mentoring across generations of leaders in interactive
ways creates a process of generativity within the community organizations that helps
develop and sustain leadership.

Former leaders mentoring current leaders: Acquisition of knowledge and insight

Outgoing positional leaders were cited by participants as vital in helping to

develop another generation of positional leaders in the community-based organization for

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extended periods well after leaving their formal position. They describe guidance
received from peers who were once formal leaders within the community-based
organization. Peer mentors provided knowledge and expertise to current leaders on a host
of issues directly acquired from having held the same leadership position or one closely
connected. Their advice assisted current leaders in navigating their roles in the
community-based organization and in the broader racial and ethnic community on
campus. Current leaders used guidance from peer mentors coupled with their own
conceptions of what should be accomplished to develop a personal leadership style. As
participants acquired more experience, they developed an interest in carrying on
leadership traditions. They spoke of the significant impact of mentoring received from
peers who possessed valuable knowledge and perspective. As a new student to the
campus and specifically to the Black student campus community, Dario recalls the
encouragement he received from the co-president of the organization to get involved.
Roger served as a unique role model because Dario had not seen a peer with the same
ethnic background in a leadership role before. He perceived Roger to be one of the most
recognized leaders on campus and aspired to achieve a similar status during his college
career. He retells,

[Roger] encouraged me a lot, whenever I wanted to do something or

whenever I had a meeting idea, he encouraged it. He never told me that it

was a bad idea; he told me to go with it. He has really set the example for

me too, because where I’m from, I’m not used to seeing a lot of Filipino

Americans who I guess could act as role models. He is someone who

keeps it positive. When he graduated, he was one of the biggest leaders on

campus. He’s interesting and he’s sociable. He was not a nerd per say; he

was really someone I could look up to.

In the subsequent year, Dario held the co-president position at the prompting of

Roger. Over time, Dario felt the community viewed him in much the same way that he

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viewed Roger. Dario took pride in knowing the racial and ethnic community viewed him
as a leader and went on to hold other positions that broadened his scope of leadership.
After two years of serving as co-president, Dario held a student government position as a
liaison to all four of the racial and ethnic communities along with another council
comprised of organizations that served students with disabilities, the Lesbian, Bi-Gay,
Transgendered population, and women. Dario explains,

Yes, I think I developed into that sort of status. Not that I see myself as a

leader and that role has been cast upon me by the community and that sort

of been my niche. I work for Asian American Alliance (AAA) and all the

[council for racial ethnic students] and [council for gender, sexual

orientation, and disabilities] groups now. AAA isn’t my main thing. I do

still care about it a lot. If they still need me I’ll be there. The current co-

presidents still turn to me for advice. I’m happy to give it to them. The

AAA experience was very important to me.

Though Dario no longer directly holds a leadership position within the racial and ethnic
organization, he maintains contact with his peers who currently hold the co-presidency
and says that they turn to him for advice.

One participant draws on the unique experience of having worked full-time in
non-profit organizations serving the Latino community for several years before returning
to school. The first time he entered the university, Jose was actively involved holding
various positions in the community and politically in the forefront advocating for students
at the university. He was one of the founders of a Latino organization that developed a
reputation for stem political activism. While stopping out of college, Jose worked with
organizations that served the needs of the broader Latino population beyond higher
education. Upon returning to college, he attempted to reconnect with the Latino

community on campus but felt marginalized by what he viewed as a new breed of

students. He hoped to identify students attending meetings that he could work with to

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help reactivate one of the affiliated Latino organizations, which he founded. Met with
significant changes in the political climate of the community, Jose felt an obligation to
run for co-president of the organization. Being older and more mature, he gave a speech
to the membership that moved the majority to vote for him. Jose remembers,

When I came back and started going to the meetings and I started to kind
of, in 2000, reintegrate myself into the Latino community here on campus,
I realized that politically things had gone downhill dramatically. It was not
the same community that I had left in 1997. Part of my concern in running
for this position at Chicano/Latino Network (C/LN), which I actually did
on kind of a whim because I was there the night they announced that they
would do this, was in the beginning to just be able to get up and say some
things that I thought were important you know to students that were there
because there had been students I was trying to talk to. But I really felt like
I was being marginalized as kind of like some sort of crazy radical person.
I felt that at this time, everybody gets to make speeches; I thought that
would be a good time to get up and say what was on my mind. That’s
really why I went to the C/LN, was to meet people to start, to reactivate
the [Mexican Community-Organizer] group.”

Concerned about the current state of activism in the Latino community on campus, Jose
felt he needed to help others understand the struggles of students in the past. Jose
believed students did not comprehend the severity and intensity of the role they could
play in serving the Latino community. Influenced by students actively involved in the
community during his earlier time in college, Jose wanted to connect current students to
previous notions of activism. Jose notes,

I was very concerned that all of these things would happen. I was concerned and I
was disappointed but also I had a lot of love for the people that I was there with
before and I felt concerned because all the things that I feel people sacrificed so
much for. They were really in jeopardy. I was disappointed that these people that
were there didn’t seem to take it very seriously and they didn’t seem to have any
respect for all the sacrifices that people have made for them. I don’t know. I just
really love those guys a lot. I didn’t feel like I could let it go out like that without
saying something.

While serving as co-president, Jose met two students he thought had great potential to
help reactive the organization. “I met Isaac that was ideal during that time and I met
Faina who is an extraordinary young lady, I think anyway.” As Jose’s experience
illustrates, when students make personal connections with emerging leaders, they develop
a strong commitment to mentor them.

Current positional leaders mentoring emerging leaders: Passage of knowledge and
insight

Having benefited from various peer mentoring relationships with former
positional leaders, current leaders, in turn, identified newer students in the community-
based organization who expressed interest in serving the racial and ethnic community
during their college years. In this way, current leaders served as peer mentors to emerging
leaders with the hopes that they would assume formal leadership positions in the near
future. Participants found a great sense of purpose in developing emerging leaders as they
struggled to help these students realize the potential impact that could be made on the
racial and ethnic community with which they identify. Current positional leaders take
great pleasure in helping others develop a passion to serve; embedded in this passion is
the desire and ability to lead.

Current positional leaders also focused on assisting emerging leaders through
difficult decision-making processes. As the current co-president of the Asian American
Alliance (AAA), Karen viewed herself as a peer mentor to Jonathan and assumed
responsibility for guiding him through a difficult experience. Because she actively
recruited him both to the university and to the Asian Pacific Islander American

community organization, she felt obligated to help him understand the impact of his

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decisions on other racial and ethnic communities. These lessons learned served as the
foundation for developing competencies to assume formal leadership roles within the
community-based organization.

Another participant describes a meaningful relationship with a peer she viewed as
an emerging leader. Mia refers to him as a younger sibling and experiences a familial
connection with him. As a result, she assumes responsibility for helping him in various
ways. Mia reacted positively to Kevin’s personality, interactions with other students, and
accomplishments. “Like one person in mind I call him my little brother cause I love him
to death. He was [in a Black fraternity] and he was doing a lot of stuff but I always
thought like a lot of the knowledge that he had and a lot of the stuff that he wanted to do
could be applied for something better. And also the stuff that he did he was an
engineering student but the stuff that he did and he did it so well cause he is such a good
person and he got along with a lot of people.” Mia concluded from these observations
that Kevin possessed the potential to be a good leader. She felt this potential needed to be
developed, exposing Kevin to new experiences and opportunities that would help him
develop more skills. Mia recognized that while Kevin was a strong communicator, he had
difficulty managing his temper during challenging times. She emphasized a need for
Kevin to develop better coping skills that could affect future opportunities presented to
him. Mia recalls,

When you have a person who can really talk to people be socialized and a

lot of people like talking with them and stuff, then that’s part of a good

leader. I was like you know what, let me try to see if there are other things

that I can get him to do. He’s a great talker but he can get hot headed at

times. Like not do this and that but you should think about it this way. The

one thing that I did tell him was don’t burn your bridges, he used to burn

all his bridges. If they didn’t do something for him “oh forget it”, then he
would call them a name or whatever. So I told him not to burn his bridges.

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Emerging leaders were given Opportunities by the current leaders to experience a kind of
apprenticeship prior to actually holding the leadership position within the community-
based organization. Jay shared,

My sophomore year I was on e-board as one of the co-programmers and so I had
started building some leadership skills and starting to see what it meant to be an
executive board member. I thought the co-presidents at that time Roger and
Bandi were people who were very strong in the community, very active, very
outgoing, personable, and me be a sort of shy introvert person, I felt like I wanted
to strive to be more like them. I think they saw in me something that they
approached me and said I should think about running for the co-president
position next year, and that’s what they put in my head.

Encouragement to participate and modeling skills contributed to Jay’s preparation for a
formal leadership role. He found comfort seeking guidance and support as he assumed
increasing leadership responsibility. Social conversations led to friendships that
established trust and credibility among peers. Emerging leaders were more likely to relate
with their peers in other contexts while utilizing friendship as the basis of their
connection. Mia explains,

After that, indirectly we’re friends so it wasn’t something like our whole

friendship was based on just this but because he was my friend and

because we had a great relationship, like he was someone that I thought

was really cool. I started helping him out and getting involved. But like

the job I had in university apartments where I was a program assistant, I

recommended him highly for that and so he got that job. He’s been doing

a lot of programs and getting more involved so it’s like. He was already in

a fraternity and that helped out but I think it was helping him get outside

of that more in the sense of community and do stuff that he already was

doing but for a greater group of people.
Mia utilized her influence to recommend Kevin for a position, which he successfully

obtained. Her purpose as his peer mentor was to help Kevin broaden his sense of

community so that more people would benefit from his contributions.

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Other students served as peer mentors in formal mentoring programs for Latino
students sponsored by the institution that encourage involvement in the Latino campus
community. In addition to helping new Latino student transition to college, the program
helps identify potential leaders of the community early in their college careers.

Current positional leaders mentoring current positional leaders

Participants elaborate on the generative nature of peer mentoring and highlight the
personal value in being mentored by peers with prior and current leadership experience.
Agrima explains, “I think it’s important when you’re mentoring to also have mentors and
to have people that you turn to you ask them for emotional support. I definitely think that
it’s important because you can’t help people unless you yourself are being helped,
because you can’t take on the world with everyone. That’s an important part of being a
student leader to know when you can help and also need help.” This point exemplifies the
need for students in formal leadership positions to assess their own needs in addition to
those who they mentor. Student leaders benefit in multiple ways as they take into account
the importance of attending to their personal needs, which can serve as a model to
emerging leaders being mentored.

Having personally benefited from peers taking time to help them develop as
leaders, participants assume responsibility to do the same for peers newer to leader roles
in campus—based organizations and the broader racial and ethnic community. Importance
is placed on exposing emerging leaders to the range of leadership styles rather than
expecting emerging leaders to follow the peer mentor’s style. Peer mentors encourage

emerging leaders to observe many forms of leadership in order to acquire perspective

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about the different ways of leading a community. Jorge reinforces this idea by noting the
importance of making sure emerging leaders have multiple peer mentors, and recalls,

I would take them by the side and under my wing. This is what I’ve
accomplished and to become a leader. I’d take them to other leaders.
There are different ways of leading a community. I’d try to get them
involved and say this is what people have done. As a leader you have to be
acquainted with other forms of leadership or all forms of doing things. If
you have any questions, I’d be happy to help. Also, I’d recommend them
to other people. With peer mentoring, if you don’t know the answer to
some questions, don’t give them the wrong answer. Refer them to
someone who might be more helpful. I’ll take them under my wing.
Somebody took me under their wing and I will do the same. As an
emerging leader, it’s about what you’re passionate about.

High participation among new members of the racial and ethnic community
resulted from continued involvement of active members even after stepping down from
formal leadership roles within the community—based organization. Individuals in formal
leadership roles modeled tangible, visible achievements that inspired other students to
make contributions, as well. For example, during elections, strong interest in actively
participating in leadership roles is apparent. As each position on the executive board is
filled, Jorge highlights the absence of apathy among the broader membership. Numerous
students readily run for the same position on the executive board, which reinforces active
participation within the overarching community-based organization. Jorge explains,
“During elections you see ten or eleven members going for one position. I can’t really
explain it. People just come and they want to get involved. Every year, there are lots of
people interested. It’s the sense of community that the past leaders developed in
Chicano/Latino Network (C/LN). The purpose of C/LN is to have an organization where
we can all come together and share experiences. It’s a need to keep that alive. Once no

one wants to fill the positions then the organization dies.” He attributes willing

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participation to a sense of community passed on from one generation of leaders to the

next, which has led to long-term continuity in the organization.

Evolution of leadership regeneration

Leadership regeneration is a cyclical process involving increasing levels of
influence. Cesar recalls his experiences with other individuals who influenced him to
develop a similar passion to serve. He explains, “It’s important because of the
experiences. I was fortunate for the people that were there for me in the past.”

I want to make sure I give back to others. It’s almost like a cycle that I

hope to continue. When I leave knowing there will be someone here who

has that passion and fire for whatever. In knowing when they leave, they

have left their mark in somebody else. ..Starting that fire for another

individual. Thinking about it now, it’s one of the reasons why I took a

position was because of that. Is there going to be someone else who wants

to do that? When I decide to take that position, there was no interest from

others. There was some obligation, in a sense to fill the position. I wanted

to do it. It’s that aspect of finding other people to do it. Finding a way to

start that fire. . .It’s weird that it’s one of the reasons when I look back on

that now.
In turn, Cesar is motivated to continue the leadership development process by identifying
and mentoring other individuals he can assist in exploring their passion to serve. Cesar
maintains he can be most influential to others by holding a formal leadership position. He
finds gratification and fulfillment contributing to a continuing legacy of leadership both
in the community-based organization and the broader racial and ethnic community.

Outgoing leaders served as peer mentors long after leaving formal positions in
community-based organizations. Additionally, participants were extremely gratified
when emerging leaders realize their own potential to impact the racial and ethnic

community with which they identify. Participants emphasize the great value in learning

from mentors and from those they mentor. Historical perspectives and advice served as

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the foundation for developing competencies necessary to assume formal leadership roles
within the community-based organization. Participants were given opportunities to
assume leadership responsibilities prior to actually holding a leadership position within
the community-based organization. Lastly, participants describe the strong familial ties
they developed with their peers, often acting as surrogate parent or sibling to others.
These experiences exemplify the dynamic nature of generativity among peer leaders in a

mentoring relationship.

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Chapter 5
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The acceleration of racial and ethnic demographic change within American
society, specifically in postsecondary education, has prompted consideration of
challenges associated with these rapid changes. While demographic change shifts
towards a majority of ethnic minorities, the rate at which these populations assume
leadership roles is disproportionate to the rate of growth in both collegiate and societal
contexts. There is a minimal presence in the literature of the factors that influence
people-of—color in assuming leadership positions. In higher education, mentoring has
been identified as a key factor that influences success among students-of-color. This
study was developed for the purpose of finding greater understanding about the role peer
mentoring plays in the leadership development of people-of-color in higher education.
Specifically, my study sought to answer the following research question: In what ways
does peer mentoring contribute to how students-of—color develop as leaders?

The research methodology of the study involved in-depth individual interviews
with students-of-color who were actively participating in racial and ethnic student
organizations at a large research university, located in the Midwest. Specifically, the
sample included students-of-color who at the time of the interview currently held the
president or vice-president position of their respective racial and ethnic community
organization. Four racial and ethnic communities including African-American, Asian
Pacific American, Chicano/Latino, and Native American served as the focal point of the

study.

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The main data collection strategy for this study was participant responses during
semi-structured interviews. I also utilized drawings, a developing data collection
technique. Drawings were not requested in order to create a rubric for interpretation, but
rather upon completing the drawings, participants were asked to interpret their drawings
so I could capture their intended meanings. Their verbal explanation was captured
directly in the transcriptions. This approach to data collection removed my interpretation
of the drawings and instead concentrated on the participant’s interpretation. The drawings
were intended to provide another venue of expression that might help participants recall
events and support their responses to the interview questions. The subjects found the
drawings interesting and they were excited to share their visual creations.

While participants shared common characteristics in holding leadership positions
within racial and ethnic-based community organizations, they each possessed unique
experiences that informed their approach to mentoring peers in a leadership context. The
appendices provide more detailed descriptions of each participant along with drawings
that capture perspectives of themselves in leadership positions within their respective
organizations.

Three themes that emerged from interviews with the participants were: Defining,
Positioning, and Generativity. Defining captures the way in which participants draw
distinctions between what peer mentors are and are not. These individuals share common
characteristics with participants yet are distinguished by their experiences and advanced
knowledge, which is shared with participants as they personally develop as leaders.
Positioning reflects what peer mentors do with regards to organizational leadership. Peers

hold formal leadership positions in their racial and ethnic community and influence

8]

participants to assume positional leadership roles with increasing responsibility in their
respective community-based organization. Generativity reflects the ways in which peers
develop other students in organizational leadership across generations. Former positional
leaders in the racial and ethnic community-based organizations serve as peer mentors to
current positional leaders, who in turn serve as peer mentors to emerging positional
leaders.

The Defining theme reveals that peer mentors who possess shared experiences
with their mentees and insight for understanding issues are valued for modeling
motivational and encouraging behaviors. Because peer mentor are viewed as solution-
seekers and confidants, students want to gain insight about past mistakes and successes.
Through personal conversations, students learned about cultural identity, relationships
with family, and societal problems, which resulted in self-exploration and greater
understanding about problem-solving in both personal and organizational contexts.
Personally, the presence of friendship creates greater comfort between peers and students,
which increases their desire to seek advice about future directions. Internal to the
organization, peer mentors help guide student leaders in dealing with membership
behaviors such as apathy and resignations, and with controversial issues and political
disagreements between leaders of internal and external groups. External to the
organization, students look to their peer mentors for support in addressing organizational
polices, efforts in community organizing and advocacy, and social injustices are the focus
of peer mentoring conversations in these contexts.

Under the theme of Positioning, participants clarified the role of peer mentors in

promoting leadership opportunities within the racial and ethnic communities. Peer

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mentors provide mentees with their initial exposure to community organizations and get
them involved through committee work, program coordination, and activity planning.
Through conversation, role modeling, sharing social networks, and encouraging active
participation, peer mentors help others to see the positive impact individuals have when
they get involved; they provide a level of organizational and cultural knowledge that
helps mentees feel they can succeed at the university and in these community groups.

Early interactions by peer mentors typically lead to involvement later in a
mentee’s college career as well, so there is benefit beyond the short term. These
relationships are often informal, but they are sometimes institutionally established
through mechanisms such as minority aides who are assigned to self-identified students-
of-color living in the residence halls on campus. More formal relationships provide
structure, role modeling, consistent interactions, and resources as needed; yet, they
sometimes are perceived by others to result in more stilted and less genuine relationships
than those created through informal mentoring where individuals seek out others.
Through both formal and informal mentoring, students receive support and
encouragement to be involved in the racial and ethnic community, including seeking
positions of increasing leadership responsibility in the respective organizations.

With each role, mentees gain experience and insight from peer mentors about how
to become increasingly vocal and effective within the community-based organization. In
effect, these relationships generate momentum and a foundation of support for mentees
within and outside the community organizations. This is sometimes especially noticeable

when students have negative experiences early on in their college life, and peer mentors

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are attributed for easing transitions back into involvement in various activities on campus
and community organizations.

Under the Generativity theme, a dynamic process of former leaders mentoring
current leaders who in turn mentor emerging leaders is highlighted. Former leaders
provide knowledge and insight to current leaders in how to manage the new leadership
role by providing vital information that assists current leaders in navigating the landscape
of the community-based organization to help avoid reinventing efforts. Current positional
leaders mentor emerging leaders so that knowledge and insight helps them develop a
passion to serve the community through leadership. Seeing directly how decisions are
made, peer mentors model skills that emerging leaders seek to develop.

Lateral mentoring, where current leaders mentor each other, enables firsthand
understanding of the nuances of leadership challenges that their counterparts experience.
Leadership regeneration involving mentoring across generations of leaders promotes
continued involvement of peer mentors long after leaving formal positions and longevity
of the community-based organizations. This choice to stay connected and continue
fostering current and future leaders is an important aspect of the culture of peer
mentoring among students of color.

These themes may appear to be all positive and absent any negative outcomes.
However, participants in this study only recalled events related to peer mentoring that
were beneficial and not harmful. Peers who were challenging were identified, but they
were not viewed as peer mentors. This being the case, peer mentoring was seen in large

part as a positive, influential process.

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Consistencies were found with the themes that emerged in my study and prior
peer mentoring research, specifically, aspects of Kram’s Developmental Model (1988).
Kram’s concept of mutuality, whereby individuals help as well as receive help from
others, is consistent with the theme of generativity. Participants in my study described
difficult periods when they could provide help to others as well as receive help when
needed.

Even though participants thought of peer mentors as coaches, their meaning was
not as structured as Kram’s concept of coaching, which provided specific strategies for
accomplishing work objectives, and achieving recognition and career aspirations.
Students-of- color in this study focused less on specific strategies for accomplishing
objectives and achieving recognition, and more on the outcomes of effective leadership in
the community. The mentoring relationship was viewed as more dynamic and less linear.
For example, one-to-one peer mentoring responds to retention problems for both
undergraduate and graduate minority students (Stromei, 2000). Specifically, students-of-
color find solace through mentoring as they deal with complex issues such as
discrimination, lack of role models, feelings of isolation, and conflict between their
everyday college experiences and the cultural values with which they were raised.
Dynamic peer relationships are heavily valued in dealing with dynamic challenges that
students-of-color face.

Komives’ (2007) work on the cyclical nature of leadership succession, referred to
as Generativity, was also present in my study. Komives argued that individuals who
develop their leadership from others look past themselves and feel responsible for

facilitating the development of other leaders, which ultimately benefits the community.

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Committed to creating a leadership pipeline, participants in my study actively encouraged
new members and peers to assume increasing responsibility over time. To promote
learning, participants taught strategies to communicate thoughts and ideas with clarity, to
create team-based approaches in leading the organization, and to manage internal and
external conflict with care and fortitude.

Though it was not directly used as a theoretical lens, Non-Cognitive Variable
Theory (Sedlacek, 2004) was evident throughout the study. Sedlacek’s eight non-
cognitive variables include positive self-concept, realistic self-appraisal, successfully
handling the system, preference for long-term goals, availability of strong support person,
leadership experience, community involvement, and knowledge acquired in a field.
Looking at the results from my study through this lens, participants demonstrated positive
self-concept and realistic self-appraisal in their descriptions of their skills and abilities
related to leadership. They discussed long-range goals of affecting societal issues beyond
their college years. Participants emphasized the impact of the support they received from
peer mentors. They elaborated on their responsibilities in positional leadership roles
within the student organizations that focused on serving their respective communities.
Lastly, they shared knowledge they acquired from prior experiences that served them in
these leadership roles. In this context of peer mentoring and leadership development, the
participant’s experiences accentuate the value of non-cognitive variables in
understanding other influences on student success and retention.

Benefits and Outcomes
Peer mentoring provides benefits to leaders in three expanded arenas including

individual, community, and society. Individuals benefit by refining leadership

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competencies that can provide personal gain in each setting they encounter. Racial and
ethnic campus communities benefit from strengthened leadership within their respective
student organizations that advocate on their behalf to the broader campus. Lastly, there
are societal benefits from the presence of diverse leadership perspectives, which provide
inclusive insight to the needs of members who have historically been underrepresented.
Benefits occur on both macro and micro levels as students-of-color are mentored by peers
in their leader development. Individual students refine competencies in key areas that
support their success as leaders. These competencies also benefit the racial and ethnic
organization, which serves broader underrepresented communities. After graduation,
these peer leaders can engage in higher levels of leadership both in professional and
community capacities. Therefore, one might conclude that society is strengthened by
having diversity in leadership across multiple levels that is fostered and supported by
peer mentors during college.

Five additional conclusions included the existence ofcommonalities across
participants, deciphering between personality and culture, preference of peer mentors
over faculty and staff mentors, challenge played a role in the mentoring process, and high
impact of formal peer mentoring in collaboration with informal peer mentoring.

First, despite the different needs of each racial and ethnic community, there are
commonalities that are present across all four communities-of-color on this campus. One
commonality was the high priority placed on developing meaningful relationships with
younger students (Komives, 2007). Adopted as “big brothers and big sisters”, students
were encouraged to become future leaders. Second, there were challenges in deciphering

between characteristics related to personality as opposed to culture. Gardiner (2002)

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discusses an individual’s personality may be influenced by their cultural identity. For
example, an individual’s personality could be introspective, which can be congruent with
their Native American cultural identity. More research is needed to explore what
perspectives and approaches to peer mentoring and leadership development are cultural
in nature as opposed to behaviors that are tied to personality type. It is conceivable that
culture and personality may be inseparable if they are interwoven together, so future
research may need to address this possibility, as well. Third, in this study, peer mentors
are generally preferred over faculty/staff mentors. Because of the nature of the campus
and advocacy role of these four student organizations, participants tended to be highly
skeptical of the influence of faculty and staff in their leadership development as opposed
to peers. Martin (2001) suggests that non-hierarchical approaches to leadership
development are more effective among college students. While some faculty and staff
were identified as influential, it appears that students recognized them in hierarchical
ways where power and authority played a prominent role; peer mentors were not seen in
this way.

Peer leaders in the community organizations in this study appear to be quite
autonomous. This may be unique to these types of organizations, the type of student
attracted to these organizations, or the large research university that was the setting of
this study. Smaller and private colleges and universities might have significantly different
student organizational structures in place, thereby affecting the type of student who takes
on leadership roles.

Fourth, challenge played a role in the mentoring process for participants. In

addition to providing support, peers questioned participants’ approaches and decisions in

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the organization. For example, a peer emphasized the inappropriateness of a participant’s
actions with regards to representing the community—based organization during a student
government assembly meeting. Participants identified moments when their peer mentors
challenged their thinking which prompted learning.

Lastly, formal peer mentoring is most impactful when coupled with informal peer
mentoring. Colleges and universities have often formalized mentoring efforts and
perceive them to be more effective than arbitrary informal mentoring (Chang et al.,
2003). Participants initially connected with their racial and ethnic community through
formal mentoring programs, in this case the multicultural aide program. However, their
involvement in the community advanced as a result of experienced peer mentors who
informally identified them as potential leaders and further encouraged them to assume
positions.

Formal peer mentoring has been identified as an effective approach to nurturing
students to campus connectedness (Matlock and Scisney-Matlock, 2001) and could be
strengthened if it works in collaboration with informal efforts that are initiated by
students in less formal ways. As institutions emphasize the creation of mentoring
programs in various sectors of higher education, they must also be cognizant of the
impact of formal mentoring programs in relation to informal mentoring programs created
by students.

Because this study was conducted on a campus with over 400 student
organizations, one might argue that the findings in peer mentoring and leadership
development within these student communities are solely unique to large, residential

institutions. However, small institutions might also benefit from understanding the

89

intricacies of student to student relationships within student organizations. Other types of
institutions might glean insight to underrepresented leadership and motivations for
succession planning within ethnic and racial communities. Student-initiated peer
mentoring on any campus might be an important focus, regardless of institution type.
While the study focused on specific institutional and participant characteristics, future
research could focus on other factors that may have influenced the findings. For instance,
students on a residential campus may be more active and engaged in co-curricular
leadership development opportunities than their commuter counterparts on other
campuses. Further, adult learners (non-traditional age) students might have a different
views of peer mentoring given other life experiences.

Lastly, it appears that there are different motivations for mentoring in these
contexts. Peer mentors in the student organization may have been motivated to mentor
other students for the purposes of leadership succession, which would benefit both the
student and the community-based organization. Institutions however, may be motivated
to provide mentoring in order to increase student engagement, which could affect student
retention. The students seemed very committed to sustaining their respective student
organizations, while the institution seemed more committed to retaining individual
students at the institution. This finding raises the questions of motivation, which
ultimately affects outcomes. If the student and institutional motivations can co-exist, peer
mentoring may be an effective strategy through which multiple gains can be achieved.
However, if they cannot co-exist, or conflict in some way, it is not clear from my study

whose motivations would win out. Further research that explores motivation of mentoring

90

for leadership, for involvement, or for engagement could be valuable to both individuals
and institutions.
Limitations

Only studying leaders at the top levels of the major racial and ethnic student
organization and not leaders throughout the organization or with affiliated organizations
in the community was a limitation of this study. The experiences of those within the
smaller or non-advocacy groups might be different. Another limitation in this study can
be found in my original review of the literature that linked peer mentoring and
multicultural peer mentoring in mono-racial contexts. I could have also explored
literature discussing multicultural peer mentoring with non-persons-of-color yet those
who share the same mentoring characteristics, such as Hill’s (2003) work that explored
mentoring between African American nurse leaders and their White counterparts. This
area of the literature could reveal insight to the impact of culture when peers have
differing racial and ethnic identities in mentoring relationships.
Implications for Practice

There are five implications for future practice including how understanding peer
mentoring can provide insight into underrepresented populations in the context of
leadership, how educators can adapt these findings to strengthen mentoring and
leadership development programs on their campuses, how student-initiated mentoring can
play a more meaningful role in responding to student needs, how non-hierarchical models
of peer mentoring change the hierarchical paradigm of mentoring, and how community
building can be utilized to stimulate leadership. Much can be learned from the students

who had peer mentoring relationships throughout their undergraduate careers in college.

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How we understand peer mentoring that gives insight into underrepresented
populations in the context ofleadership is the first implication for future practice.
Participants in this study revealed that students who identify with a particular race or
gender did not necessarily have common experiences. Therefore, peer mentoring may
result in beneficial outcomes in other contexts such as cross racial mentoring experiences.
Institutions that have fewer students-of-color may glean insight by fostering cross racial
interactions that still assist students in their leadership development. Acquiring insight
into mentoring underrepresented students may benefit society at large by modeling
similar approaches to grooming leadership among underrepresented populations for the
benefit of the greater good (Komives, 2007).

Educators can gain insight as they develop programs and services that promote
mentoring and leadership development. In this study, peer mentoring appeared to be more
impactful when time sensitivity was recognized and incorporated into the creation of
formal peer mentoring efforts, such as the multicultural aides. For example, mentoring
efforts may be most impactful during the fall semester of a student’s first year as opposed
to during the spring semester because of what students need during that point in time. The
needs that can be affected by peer mentoring may change as students become more
comfortable and familiar with the organization.

In this study, peer leaders shared both experiences of being mentored as well as
those of mentoring others. These insights might serve program developers in
accommodating the needs of both populations. By studying mentoring relationships
among students, educators can also learn how messages about leadership development

are communicated by peer mentors. For example, while technology is widely used for

92

enhancing student engagement (Junco and Timm, 2009), it was not utilized greatly by
participants in these community organizations. Face-to-face interaction was most
prevalent and sought after by both peer mentor and those being mentored. Lastly,
educators can integrate the same needs assessment strategies that informal peer mentors
use to assess the needs of other students. For example, soliciting candid reactions to
various challenges, peers were able to meet or exceed the expectations of their
counterparts by giving welcomed guidance and support. Both student and institutional
efforts can benefit from applying needs assessment techniques to respond to student
expectations.

Results of this study may also encourage institutions to place greater emphasis on
supporting student-initiated efforts, which influence more grass roots initiatives that
empower underrepresented populations. This study shows that student-initiated
mentoring often demonstrates personal investment on the part of peer mentors in
motivating other students. For example, participants expressed their desire to improve the
existing pattern of limited role models and support systems for future leaders-of-color.
Institutions may best serve these communities by investing in student-led organizations
that promote self-creation and responsibility for developing peer leaders.

Exploring the non-hierarchical aspects of peer-to-peer interactions (Martin, 2001)
provides valuable perspective about peer mentoring compared to the hierarchy that is
often present between faculty, staff, and the students they mentor, which can be affected
by perceived power differences. Participants in this study emphasized the heightened
credibility for peer mentors among students. Ironically, while there appears to be a strong

desire to move away from hierarchical leadership within some of the communities

93

(Martin 2001), the organizations themselves are often hierarchically structured. For
instance, the executive boards are often comprised with one president followed by a vice-
president, ending with a secretary who is perceived to be the lowest ranked executive
board member. Yet in this study, peer mentoring remains central to sustaining individual
leaders, the organization, and the racial and ethnic community at-large.

Educators may gain a better understanding in how to couple hierarchical
structures of leadership and organization with non-hierarchical models of peer mentoring
that is helpful in their development. Lastly, these findings can increase the support for
community-based leadership development. While peer mentoring affects individuals, it
impacts student organizations and the greater community in more robust ways. These
four racial ethnic groups might acquire greater benefit by collaborating with each other to
deal with apathy in the community, overextended leaders leading to burnout, and
negotiations with campus administration, since they share a common peer mentoring
thread.

Future Research

As a result of these findings, researchers might consider the following questions
for future research. First, how does peer mentoring in a mono-racial context differ from a
cross-racial context? This study looked at peer mentoring in the mono-racial context of
racial and ethnic community organizations because of the make-up of the student
organizations selected for this study.

Institutions would be well served to explore peer mentoring among students-of-
color in cross-racial contexts, as well. For example, what would be the nature of

interactions among student leaders-of-color with peer mentors who do not share the same

94

racial and ethnic background? Would this difference influence the type of peer mentoring
received? Would the style or content of peer mentoring be different? Multi-racial students
are challenged with how peer mentoring is organized by racial or ethnic community
because they are forced to choose a community they identify most with. If there are
differences in the role of peer mentoring in specific racial and ethnic communities, what
does it look like for multi-racial or bi racial students who have to choose a community
with which to identify? Additionally, this study may have different outcomes had the
study taken place in White-based student organizations. Therefore, future research in
non-minority organizations could provide better comparisons between these populations.

Another future question that might be explored is how does formal mentoring
differ from informal mentoring? An organizational mandate or expectation for older
students to mentor emerging leaders may affect the formality of the mentoring. Formal
programs may create this expectation, which may not be consistent with the individuals’
goals. These differences should be studied to increase our understanding of the ways in
which each approach impacts individuals. Does generation influence the degree of
formality? Do adult mentors play a different role in the participants’ development as
leaders? The adult mentor was highlighted but not extensively in comparison to peer
mentors.

A third future research question might be how do peer mentors learn how to
mentor leaders, or other students? Do they solely rely on past experiences from previous
peer mentoring experiences? If there is no formal training and one is only using past
experiences, how does that influence the type of mentoring taking place? Students often

struggle with issues of boundaries in relationships. For instance, they may face concerns

95

about privacy and confidentiality of information and without support, these students may
find themselves severely underprepared and could cause harm. Further, students may be
challenged with distinguishing roles between friendship and acquaintances. It is possible
that there is a difference between older students who mentor their peers when they are
sophomores compared to when they are juniors and seniors. How do peer mentors know
what actions to take with their mentees? Understanding the source of these learned
behaviors can provide valuable insight to training and preparing future peer mentors.
Individuals can transfer these peer mentoring skills to other roles they hold beyond the
college experience.

Additionally, what factors influence peer leaders to mentor emerging leaders? For
many individuals, there is a notion that peer mentoring is mutually beneficial, whereby
one gets as much as they receive. Peer leaders may be influenced by being motivated to
strengthen organizations in which they are vested. Student leaders often handpick who
they mentor because of the impact of the role on the community i.e., the stakes are higher
compared to the traditional peer mentoring program where the stakes may be lower. In
Marable’s (1999) traditional model of peer mentoring, students are often not attached to
an organization, an activity, or a purpose that to which they want to recruit others.

While peer mentors were generally preferred over faculty and staff mentors in this
study, one might explore whether this remains true even in times of extreme crisis.
Faculty and staff mentors may also be perceived as more experienced and aware of more
complex solutions to problems. Therefore, a future research question might explore
whether students prefer a peer mentor in all contexts including complex challenges with

the administration or in this case would they go to a trusted faculty or staff member.

96

Another area for future exploration is the distinction between coaching and
mentoring. While coaching often provides a linear focus on specific skill sets (Kram,
1988), I did not observe that from the participants in my study. Students talked about
mentoring as a dynamic experience in non linear ways. Yet, coaching is a pervasive
theme particularly in K-12 education (Miller, 2002). Does coaching play a different role
in higher education?

Lastly, some peer mentors are formally compensated by the institution such as
multicultural aides, who receive room and board in the residence hall. This compensation
is provided in exchange for completing mentoring responsibilities. Conversely, students
who hold informally mentor other students within student organizations do not receive
any nominal compensation and still complete mentoring responsibilities. The degree to
how these mentoring responsibilities are completed is unknown when comparing
compensated mentoring to uncompensated mentoring. A future research question may be
how does compensation affect the quality and delivery of peer mentoring for leaders? If
peers are paid to mentor other students, how does this compensation affect how mentors
value their role as peer mentors? Is the selection of peer mentors affected by
compensation? Differences between mentoring in each circumstance are not clearly
defined in existing research.

In conclusion, this study prompted consideration of implications for practice
among practitioners as well as areas for future research about student development as
leaders. While some limitations were identified affecting transferability, by and large,
educators and society at-large can learn valuable lessons as they identify and develop

efforts to increase the presence of people-of-color in leadership roles on all levels.

97

APPENDICES

Appendix A Individual Interview Protocol

Mentoring the Leader: The Role of Peer Mentoring in the Leadership Development of
Students-of-Color in Higher Education

Interview Protocol

Interviewer:

 

Location:

 

Time:

 

Date:

 

Subject Name:

 

Introduction:

This research project is designed to explore your perspectives of how peer
mentoring contributes to your development as a leader in college. Specifically, this study
looks at your experiences as a student-of—color leader and the influence of peer mentoring
on your development.

The consent form you signed acknowledges that you agree that this interview will
be taped. Do you still agree with this? Taping the interview helps me keep accurate
records of your responses. (If the participant does not agree to be taped, conduct the
interview and take hand-written notes.)

1. Name, Year, Major, and Career Interests
2. What is your racial and ethnic background?

98

10.

11

Prior to this academic year, what student organization have you been involved in?
What roles have you held within these student organizations? What student
organizations are you currently involved in? What roles do you hold within these
student organizations?

Do you see yourself as a leader on campus? Describe your leadership experiences?
What influenced you to become a leader in college? Why did you choose to get
involved? Tell me about it.

I’m interested in peer mentoring; how would you define peer mentoring?

Who influenced you as a leader in college? Who among your peers has mentored you
throughout college? Why did you choose these people?

What was the nature of your interaction in the peer mentoring experience you just
described? What would you and your peer mentor talk about? Were there topics you
didn’t feel comfortable talking about?

If you were to be a peer mentor to someone you felt was an emerging leader what
kinds of things would you talk about (in the context of leadership development)? If
you were to be a peer mentor to someone you felt was an emerging leader what would
you do to mentor them (in the context of leadership development)? Are you a peer

mentor to another student?

. Participants will then be given an opportunity to note any areas that may not have

been addressed in relationship to peer mentoring for leadership development of

students-of-color in college.

99

Drawings

1. Can you draw a picture of yourself and the [student organization] prior to being the
president or vice-president of the organization?

2. Please explain this drawing. What do certain aspects of this drawing mean?

3. Can you draw a picture of yourself and the [student organization] while you are the
president or vice-president of the organization?

4. Please explain this drawing. What do certain aspects of this drawing mean?

5. Can you draw a picture of who influenced. you to become a leader in the
organization?

6. Can you explain your drawing of the peer mentoring relationship to leadership
development? What are the most important parts of the drawing?

7. Is there anything you would like to add to the drawings?

100

Appendix B: Student Leader Profiles

Agrima

Agrima is a senior, majoring in Business. She identifies as Indian-American and
serves as co-president of the Asian American Alliance (AAA). Having been actively
involved as a multicultural aide for two years prior, Agrima attributes her decision to run
for the co-president position to the relationship she developed with the two co-presidents
of the organization. Agrima recalls having difficulty communicating with the other co-
president and her need for advice in how to deal with the challenging situation. She
describes mentoring as continuing process whereby one who has a mentor should also be

mentoring someone else.

“This is me more in the
community amongst the
community, during a
meeting that I would be
directly connecting
with the students

 

attending the meeting.

I would deal with them
on a one on one basis.
getting a feel for who
they are, what their
needs are, and what the
issues are so that I can
better [understand]
them and be their
voice. " -Agrima

 

 

 

(Figure 4: Hand drawn by participant,
Agrima, co-president, in Asian Pacific American student organization)

101

Aidan

Aidan is a 4th year senior, majoring in Social Science. He identifies as 1/2
Mohawk, 3/: White from Canada and is the Co-Chair of the Native American Student
Association (NASA). In his first year, he was involved in student organizations external
to the Native American community. During his sophomore year, he served as Vice
President of NASA. However, due to feelings of burnout from having multiple leadership
responsibilities, Aidan chose to work in an internship during his junior year and take a
break from the organization. During that year, he was asked by the outgoing co-chairs of
NASA to run for the position because of his prior NASA experience and the lack of
interest among the membership to assume the co-chair role in the organization.

Aidan views his involvement as an opportunity to explore his cultural identity and
learn more about his heritage. He explains the value of an upper-class student giving
advice that a staff member would not give by virtue of their position. Aidan attempts to
share lessons he has learned from various leadership experiences with younger students
with whom he is in contact. Though they are peers, he perceives residence hall mentors
as artificial, and views peer mentors within the student organizations as more genuine and

impactful to emerging leaders.

fie/3.7.?

a
(Figure 5: Hand drawn by participant,
Aidan, co-chair, in Native American
Student Organization)
0
o 0

 

 

Angeni

Angeni is a 3rd year junior, majoring in Social Science. She identifies as Native
American-Navajo and during her sophomore year, she served as the Co-Chair of the
Native American Student Association (NASA). Angeni became involved in the Native
American community as a freshman by serving as NASA’s representative to the
[Academic Assembly] of the student government. While participating in a formal
mentoring program she was exposed to community-wide activities such as the Pow-Wow
and conferences. As a result of these experiences, she developed a strong commitment to
be involved and advocate for NASA to the greater campus community. Angeni describes
her interactions with and observations of the two co-chairs of NASA, which influenced
her to become more involved in a positional role. Angeni reinforces the need to have
Native American community representation in decision-making processes that affect
students on campus. She attributes a successful transition into the co—chair role to
coaching she received from two former co-chairs, who helped her transition into the co-
chair role. Angeni believes that anyone can be a mentor by giving advice and being a

positive image for future leaders in the organization.

 

“I am standing in
front of the
[Native American
Student

-——-—- - Association]
I general assembly
meeting. I am
leading by asking
what’s going on
with the planning
of our events. ”
-A ngeni

\\\

 

 

 

(Figure 6: Hand drawn by participant,
Angeni, co-chair, in Native American student organization)

 

 

 

103

Cesar

Cesar is a senior majoring in Business. He identifies as Filipino American and
served as the Vice-President for the Asian American Alliance (AAA). He recalled the
previous co-presidents as having a significant influence on his involvement in the
community. Witnessing their efforts to make a difference and increase awareness in the
community, Cesar was inspired to assume a leadership role in the organization. He
frequently relies on the former co-president for problem solving guidance to strengthen
the organization. When mentoring is absent, Cesar maintains that the organization
suffers. Cesar is passionate about being able work with someone who is driven to be
involved and assist him or her to turn interest into a passion for action. He maintains that
one can help other students by helping them realize the difference they can make in other
people’s lives. Cesar feels that he is preparing future student leaders as a way of giving
back to continue the cycle of leadership.

Q Q
\ /

/ \@
(Figure 7: Hand drawn by participant,

Cesar, vice-president, in Asian Pacific American student organization)

104

 

“T hat ’s me in the middle. Taking this vice president position, and being
on the executive board All these different people were coming to me for
advice or asking how we do this, what can we do in the [Asian American
Alliance], or what we can do as a community to increase membership.
..all these different people on all these different aspects, and having the
new students being drawn to me as a person of light. In that position,
students saw me as a leader. They saw me as a person who was very
powerful, who knew what I was saying, and knew what I was doing. They
were looking to me for some sort of guidance. I think looking back on it, I
think I did that a little bit with taking separate pe0ple and having them
come together. ” -Cesar

 

 

 

Dario

lDario is a senior majoring in Social Science. He identifies as Filipino American.
He served as co-president of the Asian American Alliance (AAA) for two consecutive
years. Since high school, Dario was actively involved in the Asian Pacific American
community and viewed college as an opportunity to continue his passion to serve the
community. Invited by a senior student holding an executive board position, he attended
his first meeting. Though initially he had no intentions of running for the position, he
responded to the encouragement of the outgoing co-president to run for theico-president
position. Dario spoke of the care he received from the outgoing co-president and his
willingness to share perspectives about pressing issues facing the community. He
describes exchanges with peer mentors as the reason he does what he does. Dario

experienced “inspiration and recharge” from their interactions.

105

 

(Figure 8: Hand drawn by participant,
Dario, co-president, in Asian Pacific American student organization)

 

“This is a picture of my e-board and I performing at [the cultural show],
which is the bi-annual cultural show that the [Asian American Alliance]
sponsors. At the end of the show my e-board and I did a little dance and
the pose of the dance and all of the female was to get up on the males
shoulders, it was pretty much half and half that year. And we all held up
them posters that had the letter on it that spelled [APA] and then we
flipped it over and it said e-board. " -Dario

 

 

 

Jay
Jay is a master’s student majoring in Education who identifies as multiracial. He
served as the co—president of the Asian American Alliance (AAA). A transfer student
after his first year in college, Jay wanted to further explore his identity. Invited by his

minority aide to AAA meetings, he quickly developed relationships with members of the

106

executive board. It was there that he developed a sense of community when he assumed a
position on the e-board. The two co-presidents at the time approached him to take on

increasing responsibility both in causes and activities in the organization.

He attributes hearing the perspectives of older students helped him develop his
leadership style. Both peers and advisors contributed to his self-identity development. Jay
finds it difficult to distinguish between friends and peer mentors; however, he does draw
distinctions between formal and informal mentoring. He maintains that in formal
mentoring, there is no choice, and one is assigned, whereas in informal mentoring, one
seeks out potential and peer mentors want to help in the transition. As the first in his
family to graduate from college, he attributes his persistence and graduation to older

students who influenced his perspectives about the value of a higher education.

:7

(Figure 9: Hand drawn by participant,
Jay, co-president, in Asian Pacific American student organization)

107

 

“This is me that year at the end of the year we won the outstanding
student organization of the year award. I felt that I had put my heart and
soul into [Asian American Alliance], so I thought we wonfiom a lot of
the work I put in. That’s me. There was an e-board. I almost failed that
semester for everything 1 put in. I didn’t deserve the award but I know
like I got it for the community and whatever. This is the community and
my [AAA] membership tied to we all won the award. I wrote the proposal
for the award so I have ownership of that. ” -Jay

 

 

 

Jonathan

Jonathan is a 3rd year senior majoring in Social Science. He identifies as a
multiracial Asian American, and currently serves as Co-President of the Asian American
Alliance (AAA). As a leader, he feels he is passing on what was passed on to him.
Jonathan recalls two individuals, the advisor to the organization and the co-president,
who influenced him to become more involved after his first year of no involvement. He
shares his realization that he wanted to lead in a different way with kinship and trust. In
dealing with conflict in the organization, he would talk with the previous co-president to
gain a better understanding of the dynamics.

Because most of his mentors are female, Jonathan emphasizes the importance of
his mentoring relationship with the advisor to the organization who was the only male
influence in his life. Jonathan identifies faculty, staff, and peers who serve as mentors in a
particular context. He describes an academic mentor, emotional mentor, professional
mentor, peer mentor and a life mentor. Jonathan describes peer mentoring as keeping
each other afloat and passing your craft to somebody like you, whom you can identify

with, and who you want to help with successes.

108

 

(Figure 10: Hand drawn by participant,
Jonathan, co-president, in Asian Pacific American student organization)

 

‘ I think my role in AAA is not so much internal, though I help with that, it’s
‘ more external. I do communicate with them and peoplefrom other
universities. But my main focus is our voice within [the university] as a
whole, where I think it can be very valuable because we have a new Asian
American Studies Program. The true identity of what true leadership of
AAA is the collaboration. It’s like a really efiective organization doesn’t
work because of one person, it’s because of a bunch of people. Because of
[Manay], I 've become a lot better at conflict resolution. I coordinate with
[the minority student council] and my eflorts to understand where
[multicultural] people are comingfrom. I think the role of co-president is a
mixture of things. I’m the person in the seat and I’m also the person who
establishes a political presence. Jonathan

 

 

 

Jorge
Jorge is a senior, majoring in Social Science. He plans to attend law school. He is
currently the Co-Chair of the Chicano/Latino Network (C LN). Jorge recalled his

involvement in the C /I.N organization since his freshman year. Older students invited

109

him to attend the meetings and encouraged him to become increasingly involved. He
became a [residence hall] representative, Vice Chair, and later Co-Chair of the
organization because of his dedication to the Latino community. He saw a need to unify
and increase collaboration between sub-groups (Greek organizations, Activist
organizations, and members) within the community. Leadership is considered a “big
word”. When describing challenges in the organization, he sought advice from older
students in the organization who had previously held the position in which he currently
serves. He points out the need to mentor “little brothers and sisters” and be mentored by
“old school cats”. A sense of community and dedication to the Latino community are

critical to the strength of the organization.

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(Figure 1 1: Hand drawn by participant,
Jorge, co—chair, in Chicano/Latino student organization)

110

 

 

“Everybody has the same power. Nobody has more power than any
individual member of the group. The e-board is more open. We have
chair, chair two, vice-chair, treasurer, secretary, programming,
facilitator, and historian. I put the e-board on the bottom, because our
purpose is to serve these organizations whereas the organizations are
above us. If we aren ’t serving our constituency then we ’re not doing
our job. That’s why I put us at the bottom. Everybody has the same
power. When I was in the e-board meetings, people didn’t want to
recognize that their organization affiliation had a role in the way they
voted in allocating funds. For example, we had three positions were
filled by [La Raza] members and every time they asked for funding;
their funds were allocated. Whereas now, we know that we are part of
organizations. We are co-chairs but we are looking out for the welfare
of organizations. We are consciously aware of whatever vote may be
affected by what organization you are in, but we want to make sure
that everything stays within the same frame. Every single member of
the e-board is part of a different organization. That’s how it works
now. ” -Jorge

 

Jose

Jose is a first year master’s student in Social Science and plans to complete a

PhD. He identifies as Chicano, Mexican and White. He uses the terms bi-racial and

multi-class to describe his cultural identity. Jose returned to college to complete his

undergraduate degree, which he began in the early 19905. Nearly a decade later, Jose

served as co-chair of Chicano/Latino Network (C/LN). Having been an activist in the

Latino community, he was disappointed with the lack of political activity of Latino

students on campus and hoped to reactive the organization by mentoring two students
with interest in community organizing. Jose intentionally chooses not to identify as a

leader but rather an organizer because of the ease in abdicating responsibility to leaders.

111

 

This distinction is based on the notion of the individual vs. the collective. He believes all
of us are peer mentors to other students around us. Jose compares mentoring peers as an
exchange of giving and sharing with mentoring from elders as primarily receiving
information and advice. He maintains that mentors must look at what they are prepping
mentees to do: assume responsibility to the community, and prepare emerging organizers
to take their jobs. Jose argues that, unlike men, women are more responsible, reliable and
articulate. He identifies students he wants to work with that listen and are qualified by

their actions.

(Figure 12: Hand drawn by participant,
Jose, co-chair, in Chicano/Latino student organization)

 

“It depends on what time. Because in the beginning it was really
bad but in the end we had a good time. By the end of the
semester we were all having a really good time. Here everybody

is a big mess and by the end ....we ’re all together. ” -Jose

 

 

 

Juanita
Juanita is a 4th year Social Science student. She identifies as '/2 Mexican and '/2
Puerto Rican from a working class community and serves as the co-chair of the Chicano

and Latino Network (C/LN). She talks about her discomfort as a freshman until she met

other students in the Latino community who invited her to attend meetings. Through her
involvement she found support, which served as a foundation for her. Juanita identified
issues in the community that she felt she could play a role in solving. She was involved in
other affiliated groups and worked to promote unity, inclusiveness, and connectedness
between and among groups. Both peer and faculty and staff members served as mentors
to her throughout her experiences. She spoke of role modeling to younger and current
students. She focuses on the needs of the community and the desire to make a difference.

She defines leadership as not self-promoting but rather comes from the heart.

(CR

0 / (Figure 13: Hand drawn by participant,
Juanita, co-chair, in Chicano/ Latino
student organization)

”Our main goal this year is unity within community. Because originally there
were 13 organizations within C/LN but they all had their own agendas and
they all did diflerent things. What we try to do is make it more inclusive. Just
coming to C/LN wasn ’1 good enough for us and us just giving them money or
them being required to come to meetings wasn ’t good enough. Now to be part
of the organization within C/LN, they have to do a community service as C/LN.
All the members have to commit others to perform community service for
C/LN; they have to throw programs with us. Before it was just e-board making
up the different meetings of what we wanted to do. But now all the
organizations have to make one with the C/LN e-board. It’s all in conjunction
together in diflerent presentations and functions. They have to attend 2
diflerentfunctions of another organization and stufif like that. Now we’re
trying to create just you don 't have to be at the rest of them but have respect
and support your community. ” -Juanita

 

 

 

 

113

Karen

Karen majored in Social Science and changed her major to Arts and Humanities.
She identifies as a Korean Adoptee and served as the co-president of the Asian American
Alliance (AAA). Throughout her first three years on campus, Karen was involved in
sororities, Academic Assembly, and [Racial and Ethnic Coalition]. These experiences
prepared her for the role of co-president. She felt she could give back to the community
and help strengthen the relationship with affiliated groups. Due to personal illness, she
was challenged with holding the position and attending to other personal needs. Karen
focused on increasing student involvement in the community and bringing groups
together. She identified faculty and staff mentors as encouraging in both a formal
program and informal ways. The two former co-presidents of the organization served as
peer mentors and encouraged her to become involved. She sought out guidance in
personal, academic, and career realms. With increased involvement came increased

responsibility and increased her level of leadership.

 

 

“ [Its] all of my e-board, my co-prez
[Dario] and all of the rest of the e-
board.... I’m kind of leading
discussion, leading meetings, leading
planning groups, and trying to keep
everybody involved, writing down
everyone ’5' ideas and considering
them in trying to decide and all that
kind of stuff. ...trying to give people
what they want to hear, do, and see

 

activity-wise. ” -Karen

 

 

 

(Figure 14: Hand drawn by participant,
Karen, co-president, in Asian Pacific American student organization)

114

hdarcus

While attending college, Marcus majored in Natural Science. Identifying as an
African American, Marcus was very active in the student community for Black student
activism, a minority aide, Black caucus president, and active in a study-in. Afier the
study-in there was a need to resurrect a defunct Black Student Union (BSU). As
President, he felt personally challenged in his own leadership abilities and felt like he had
to rise to the challenge despite feelings of being burnt out. Serving as president seemed
like a natural progression from holding previous positions in the community. Marcus felt
he was in the club of student leaders on campus due to his involvement. He was
constantly stepping out of his comfort zone often on other people’s behalf but felt an
obligation to do so on behalf of the community.
Marcus recalls major crises in the community as opportunities to unify by rallying around
issues. The former president of the organization along with the advisor served as peer
mentors. His relationship with those individuals influenced him to become a leader.
Marcus defines peer mentoring as someone in the same phase of life or similar life
experience, a little advanced, takes the time to be a sounding board, and someone to help
you get more out of yourself then you would have otherwise. He emphasizes the value of

informal mentoring over formal mentoring.

/" /
(Figure 15: Hand drawn by participant,
Marcus, president, in African American student organization)

115

 

“Me (stick figure) in the middle holding hands standing in a circle,
holding hands with other students. Some of them are in [Black Student
Union], some are in [Asian American Alliance], and some are in
[Native American Student Association]. ” -Marcus

 

 

 

Mia

Mia is a senior majoring in Arts and Humanities who identifies as '/2 Black and ‘/2
Mexican from El Paso, Texas. Prior to become the Co-Chair of Chicano/Latino Network
(C/LN), she had minimal involvement in the community. She recalls her minority aide
visiting her room and inviting her to attend a meeting as a freshman. From watching
previous student leaders lead campus demonstrations such as a book protest, Mia was
inspired to become more active. However, after those experiences she observed the
organization falling apart and a lack of consistency in the leadership. It was largely due to
encouragement from a peer that motivated her to run for the Co-Chair position. Mia
describes examples of conflict and tension within the organization whereby she turned to
a peer who provided a member’s perspective. Mia chooses not to focus on the title of her
position, but rather emphasizes the importance of giving everyone in the organization
voice. She believes the key to peer mentoring is creating a relationship where two people
are comfortable with one another, share common ideas and perspectives. Mia prefers peer
mentoring to an older mentor because of the realness in the interaction, the lack of

boundaries present, and the ease of relating to their current situation.

116

o, 6 .
2:11

M
6” a/ [’1 A6

- - V09
>0

I! In I. /

‘f 2 f i i’
i’ if ” r
53 2
(Figure 16: Hand drawn by participant,
Mia, co-chair, in Chicano/Latino student organization)
Miguel
Miguel is a 4th year senior majoring in Natural Science, and plans to attend
medical school. He identifies as Mexican—American. In his 3rd year, he served as co-chair
of the Chicano and Latino Network (C/LN) with the goal of reaching out to other
organizations. As a freshman, he recalls his Aide, who encouraged him to become
involved. He identifies as a leader, views the position as recognized, and explains there is
responsibility to lead. He views his leadership style as not wanting to offend, which can
create conflict. Older students who served as co—chairs, along with advisors and friends
gave him support and advice. Miguel’s sister who was heavily involved in the Latino
community during her undergraduate years, influenced him to play a role in the
community. Peer mentors helped him throughout his tenure. Miguel explains that peer
mentors are equal to him; they share knowledge, and are there for support, particularly
during times of feeling overwhelmed. He describes experiences in the organization
involving conflict and the challenges he faced in trying to handle the situation. Peers have

provided a listening ear and advice.

117

f0 a
(29
(Kg

(Figure 17: Hand drawn by participant,

 

 

“This is basically the
co-chairs talking and
listening to its members.
Members are having a
good time it was good,
exciting, and just a good
time/or everyone. It
was a great place to be
and a great

)1

experience. -Miguel

 

Miguel, co—chair, in Chicano/Latino student organization)

Musheer

Musheer is a 3rd year student, majoring in Natural Science. He plans to pursue a
master’s degree in Natural Science. He identifies as American Indian and currently serves
as the Vice-President of the Asian American Alliance (AAA). As a freshman, a former 6-
board member of the organization invited him to an AAA meeting. Because of the
positive experience with other students, he increasingly became involved. He feels others
view him as a leader. He identified two staff members working with the Asian Pacific
American community as mentors. lHis roommate, who served as the co-president of AAA
the previous year, encouraged him to become involved. Karen would be a source of
advice when he encountered problems, gave him suggestions of how to handle situations,

and provided her opinion about what was right. Feels every first year student should have

an older student to mentor them.

118

 

 

“This is not that
organized where I feel
like people don 't know
what they’re doing.
. Things are messed up.
. . There is no order to it.
' There are few people
' are even interested in
' coming. There 's a lot
' of confusion and I ’m
thinking about what I
' I can do. " -Musheer

 

 

 

(Figure 18: Hand drawn by participant,
Musheer, vice-president, in Asian Pacific American student organization)

Quinton

Quinton is a 5lh year student, majoring in Business who plans to pursue a PhD in
Business and work in private industry. He identifies as an African American male and
currently serves as Vice-President for the Black Student Union (BSU). Quinton recalls
his involvement began during his first year in college and increased over the year. During
his first year he was a member and in his second, he was African American Caucus
director. Upon return from a study abroad trip during his 4‘h year, he assumed the Vice-
President position for BSU. He felt he could be valuable as a liaison between the
President and the organization. Quinton views himself as an older leader within the

community who can help other students on the executive board grow in their positions.

119

He identified former student leaders as peer mentors who inspired him to become
involved and drew distinctions in how they mentored him based on their gender. A
female served in a “mother role” and a male peer mentor, pushed and motivated him. He
went to different peer mentors for different things. He prefers peer mentors both in being
one and being mentored by one. Quinton emphasizes the importance of approachability
in being an effective mentor. When mentoring other students he tries to create a
comfortable space for them to hang out and talk about anything. He notes the importance

of focusing on mentoring and pushing oneself and others to grow personally.

ELIE!

5 ch‘
(are?) I

S.)

 

6 7- of

(Figure 19: Hand drawn by participant,
Quinton, vice-president, in student organization)

 

“I was always asking the question WHY to the people on the e-board. Why do
you want to do this? Why do you want to do that? I felt that I was more
connected with the campus than a lot of individuals on the e-board. A lot of the
people on the e—board had their own way of looking at things so it was very pro
Black, it was very social. I was one of the guys who you know played devil ’s
advocate and would always prolong the issue to make sure everybody
understands why this issue? Why do we do this? Is this the best way we should
do this? I was more of a realist. I was very confrontational with some of the
people on the board. I think that they developed that respect for me because
they didn ’1 think I was one way or the other. But I was able to learn how to
network and talk between people. Being that young person in BS U always
asking the question why and now seeing some of the other individuals on my e-
board doing the same thing now... We ’re still trying to accomplish the goals
that we set forth. I stay kind of an older figure on the board now. " -Quint0n

 

 

 

Shambe

Shambe is a 4‘h year history major who plans to pursue a doctorate in Social
Science. She identifies as a Black woman and currently serves as the President of the
Black Student Union (BSU). As a freshman she was a distant member in the
organization. However, coming from [the inner city], she experienced many racial issues
on campus. She increased her involvement over the next two years by holding e-board
positions in the organization. By her 4th year, she dove into the leadership position “head
first” because no one else in the community “stepped up” to the plate. She identifies
faculty, peers, and family as mentors. Her peer mentor was the former president of BSU
who provided historical insight to a tradition of Black student activism. Shambe shared
the pressures of the position where expectations are high and she is often challenged by

her inability to just be a student at times. The position provides her with an opportunity

for growth, by asking her peer mentor for advice on how to deal with situations in the
position and insight. Reciprocal trust” is an important ingredient to successful peer
mentoring. Further, Shambe draws a distinction between activism and leadership and

expresses a desire to leave a legacy that represents both areas.

 

(Figure 20: Hand drawn by participant,
Shambe, president, in African American student organization)

 

“I have myself here. I 'm here smiling carelessly [and] not so much responsibility.
I have a beam of green around me because I believe that green represents growth
for me and] was in a stage of growing. Just continuing to grow and take in as
much as I can. I was just a sponge for knowledge. As soon as I found out that
there was a chance for me to grow at this university. I accepted anything I could
find here, when I went back home, when I went to South Africa, everywhere. I
was just growing, growing, and growing. I ’m here now in this position that I
didn 't necessarily choose, but was chosen for me due to the circumstances and
‘ I ’m here with my locks. I was trying to express that I’m not always so carefree.

I ’m not always so free of responsibility. I have a lot of responsibility. I’m always
in deep thought. I have a bit of seriousness that I give myself because I know that
I have to. This is not a blank expression but it’s a deep in thought expression that
I have because I have to constantly be on my toes. I have a beam of light around
me because in a leadership position on this campus, people will always look at
me for some type of knowledge or I bring some type of consciousness to them. I
bring some type of knowledge. I have the beam of purple around them because it
represents a lot of things. It represents really being a womanist. That 's what I
have become. Often times being a Black woman in a leadership position it 's a lot
of pressure. You’re a woman and you ’re Black and you 're a leader so-called.
You just have to know how to keep that balance. That 's what womanism means
for me at one level. I have the purple around me and I have the light around me. "
-Shambe

 

 

122

 

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