Can peer mentoring power equity? In this episode, we explore how peer mentoring programs help students navigate the hidden curriculum of higher education. Drawing on multi-institutional research, we examine how these programs support access, belonging, and success – and how institutional context shapes whether and how equity is explicitly named.
See our full episode notes at https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/can-peer-mentoring-power-equity/
In this episode of Limed: Teaching with a Twist, members of Team Augmentors – Krista Craven (Carleton University), Maggie Safronova (University of California Santa Barbara), Diana Gregory (Kennesaw State University), and Olivia Choplin (Elon University) – share insights from their cross-institutional research on peer mentoring programs.
Through campus scans, surveys, and in-depth interviews with program leaders across multiple campuses, their team explored how peer mentoring supports student success and equity. Their findings suggest that while these programs consistently promote access, belonging, and navigation of the hidden curriculum, the extent to which they are explicitly framed as equity-driven often depends on institutional context and climate.
We discuss the role of peer mentors in demystifying higher education, the importance of training and support, and the challenges of embedding equity and social justice into program design. As the team looks ahead to expanding their framework and studying mentor experiences more deeply, this conversation invites us to rethink mentoring as a shared, relational process that makes opportunity more visible, more accessible, and can involve student partnership at every level.
This episode was hosted and edited by Matt Wittstein, and produced by Matt Wittstein in collaboration with Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning.
Themes and music composed and produced by Kai Mitchell, Elon University Music Production and Recording Arts class of 2024. Kai produces music and releases it across streaming platforms with the producer’s name KVI. You can follow Kai on Instagram @theofficial_kvi.
Show art was created by Jennie Goforth, Nolan Schultheis, and Matt Wittstein.
The Center for Engaged Learning uses Rev to create transcripts for each episode.
Matt Wittstein (00:11):
You're listening to Limed: Teaching with a Twist, a podcast that plays with pedagogy. In higher education, we often talk about mentorship as something formal, structured, and top down. But what happens when mentorship happens between peers? Students navigating the same systems just a few steps apart. In this episode, we explore a simple but powerful question. Can peer mentoring power equity? This month, I sat down with Olivia Choplin, Krista Craven, Diana Gregory, and Maggie Safronova, members of a multi-institutional research group studying peer mentoring programs across diverse campus contexts. Through surveys and in- depth interviews, their work examines how these programs support student success and how they often make the invisible hidden curriculum of college a little more visible and navigable. Together, they unpack what peer mentors actually do, how institutional context shapes the language and framing of equity, and why training and support for mentors may be the key to meaningful impact.
(01:23):
This conversation invites us to rethink mentoring, not as a hierarchy, but as a shared process of making meaning, access, and belonging possible. If you like our podcast, please take a moment to rate, review, and share it with others. I get a lot of joy out of producing this podcast, and I hope I can reach a lot more people. Now, onto the show. Enjoy. I'm Matt Witstein.
(01:58):
Hello, team augmentors. It is so great to see you all again. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast and to learn about what you all did with your Center for Engaged Learning Research Seminar. To get us started though, I would love for you to introduce yourselves to our audience. Please share who you are, where you're from, what you do in general. But I'd also like to know what are some of the most important characteristics that your best mentors exhibited? Krista, why don't you start?
Krista Craven (02:28):
My name's Krista Craven. I live in Ottawa, Canada, and I am currently an equity and inclusion learning specialist at Carleton University. And prior to that, I was a faculty member at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. In terms of my best experience with mentorship or being mentored, it was during my PhD studies, and my dissertation chair was a phenomenal mentor. And I think the characteristics that she possessed was, one, she was a huge cheerleader for me. So she supported me in ways that were materially and emotionally and very socially supportive. She always had lots of resources and provided a lot of ... Yeah, she was very hands-on. And she also cared deeply, and she gave a lot of very rigorous and helpful feedback, but we also played cards together all the time and spent a lot of time in non-academic settings, also building a relationship.
(03:40):
So I think that was sort of what defined my best mentorship experience. Maggie, would you like to go next?
Maggie Safronova (03:54):
Sure. I am Maggie Safronova. I am at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I'm the associate director of the Office of Teaching and Learning at UCSD. Thinking back to my relationships with my mentors, and what really stands out to me is that the most effective mentorship practices was when my mentors provided me feedback on my work that was not aligned with me as a person, or how hard I work, or how much time I put in, but truly taught me how to provide effective feedback about the product that is in front of them, and that truly recognizing the difference between providing feedback about work and not intertwining it with the producer or the author taught me how to also be respectful of people's work and how to give feedback in a way that a person doesn't walk away wondering what did they do incorrectly.
Diana Gregory (05:11):
Well, thank you, Maggie. And hi, everybody. I'm Diana Gregory. I am a faculty member at Kennesaw State University in the School of Art and Design, where I teach art education to both undergraduates and graduates. And I want to give a little shout out to some mentors in my life. And the first one is actually my third through fifth grade teacher when I was in elementary school, because as a dyslexic, I was not reading at all, but she saw the strengths that I had as a visual learner, and she supported me and was a champion of the fact that I, in fact, could succeed, and I never forgot that. And then later in my graduate program, my second shout out has got to go to two people that were involved with my dissertation. One was the chair of the department, Sally McRory. She was someone who, when I would bring an idea to her and say, "Hey, what if I did this?
(06:30):
" She would always say, "Sure, go do that. " And that belief in my abilities was paramount to my being able to dream big and think about the profession that I was really beginning to enter at that stage in my life. And my second one was to my chair of my dissertation who just was always there to say, "Enjoy this and jump in feet first and you will succeed." And that was something that meant a lot to me because it was personal and professional. And so I'm going to turn this over to Olivia.
Olivia Choplin (07:17):
Thanks, Diana. Hi, everybody. My name is Olivia Choplin and I am a faculty member who teaches French in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Elon University. And I also spent four years in a gig with our teaching and learning center as an associate director there. When I think back about mentors who've had a huge impact on my life, I always think about my undergraduate advisor in the French program who, because he saw me as a human in his classroom, asked me the right kinds of questions when I went to meet with him and helped me figure out my path by asking the right questions at the right time. I was going to potentially be a double major in English and chemistry as an undergrad, and he sort of made me see that French was really my joint passion, and it definitely was. And he continued to follow me throughout my undergraduate career, but also as a young professional and signaled to me an opportunity to serve as a, potentially to apply for a job as a visiting professor there as a sabbatical replacement.
(08:30):
So continued to mentor me even as I became a young professor and helped me not only as a teacher grow in my knowledge of the field, but also as a mentor and how to become the kind of professor that I wanted to be. So he's a great, great mentor.
Matt Wittstein (08:51):
These are some really great responses. And I kind of see this little dichotomy that a few examples of really personal care, but then a few examples of very tangible support that things you can point to that were actually helpful. And I just think that's super cool. I always like hearing these stories. Before we get into talking about what you all did with the summer seminar program, I'd love to know what attracted you to studying mentorship with a CEL seminar.
Olivia Choplin (09:22):
I can answer that one quickly for myself. It was both my deep and abiding interest in mentoring students, but also a university opportunity. Our university was undergoing this huge mentoring initiative that a lot of really smart people were brought together on a big committee to talk about how we could improve the mentoring ecosystem on our campus. And I realized that if I wanted to meaningfully serve on that committee, I needed to have some theoretical grounding other than my own individual hunches about what makes good mentors. I really wanted to look at the research. And so for me, it provided an opportunity to deepen that service experience by gaining some actual research acumen around what makes mentoring work on a campus.
Diana Gregory (10:10):
I want to piggyback a little bit on what Olivia has said here. I think that one of the things that really attracted me to the call was the fact that the depth of knowing that these collaborations would be so broad and that I might have the opportunity to work with people who cared about this topic in a way that was going to be deeply personal, but also professional. And it was going to also, I thought as a lifelong learner, I realized I was going to hear and learn throughout the process. And that was really important to me. I just wanted to be present in the moment and see what was going to happen. It was exciting, really.
Krista Craven (11:00):
Yeah. And I'd say that for me, there were a couple things. I mean, I recognized the transformative impact of good mentorship, especially my own experiences. And then when I was teaching at Guilford College, I just loved the mentoring relationships that I was in and the work that I did with students. But I applied to this seminar when I was just starting my position as an equity and inclusion learning specialist, and I really saw that mentorship and mentoring relationships are so central to creating inclusion and meeting students' needs, so that equity piece of things. So I wanted to explore that further, which is why I decided to apply.
Maggie Safronova (11:46):
I think when I was applying, I kind of had a similar context to Olivia and thinking in my position, I was thinking about on our campus, we have many mentoring opportunities, student peer support opportunities, and I wanted to explore how other universities, what are the environments, what are these relationships, what do they look like in order to be able to bring back more information and thinking about how can we continue to foster peer mentoring relationships at scale in large universities across different departments. And so that's what I was really interested in because as a comparativist by training, I'm always drawn to let me learn about different cases and figure out what are some of the similar patterns, what are some of the differences? Because I felt that it's projects like this that could really help campuses develop programs that are scalable and that are strong and can persist from year to year.
(13:01):
And yeah.
Matt Wittstein (13:05):
That's beautiful. So I want to get into what you all actually did with your project. And so what was your research question and how did your group formulate it? Where did it come from? How did you come to what your research question actually ended up being?
Maggie Safronova (13:23):
I'm going to start by just mentioning on how we arrived at the question, and then maybe someone can take over in regards to the question. When we were put in our group the first day at the seminar, we all started talking and we all recognized that we were all in one way or another working with faculty and varying on the bigger spectrum of some faculty developers, some faculty on committees, et cetera, et cetera. And we kept talking about, we knew we had to come up with a research question, but what we're talking about is really describing the challenges that we see on our campuses in regards to sustaining, continuously supporting peer mentoring programs and how much time it takes for staff, how much time it takes for faculty. And thinking of this idea of like, what can realistically can we do or what kind of product can we create that is going to make faculty and staff feel seen and recognize that they're not alone in those challenges and at the same time, also celebrate how fantastic these programs are and how much benefit it comes from the students who are receiving the mentorship as well as for the mentors themselves.
(14:50):
So I think that that was one of the things that we spent like half a day discussing of like, these are all the things that we hear across our different campuses. How do we tell folks who are involved? We see you, this matters and you're not alone.
Olivia Choplin (15:06):
And to piggyback off of that, Maggie, I think it's important that when you talk about the name of our group, which is the augmentors, and we thought of ourselves as the augmentors of capacity. We were thinking about how can we, in this higher ed landscape where people are working so hard and are overburdened and faculty and staff can't do all of the mentoring that needs to be done on a campus, how could we build capacity on campuses for folks to work with students who can be meaningful mentors to their peers and really help the mentoring ecosystem, I keep coming back to that metaphor, but thrive and to help all students be able to thrive because they're getting the mentoring that they need from various different sources.
Matt Wittstein (15:56):
So what was the research question?
Olivia Choplin (15:59):
It evolved. So our research question started as sort of within programs that provide peer academic support, where are the opportunities to develop and deepen meaningful and equity driven mentoring relationships that will increase students' sense of self-efficacy and belonging within their chosen field of study, and how can we contribute to doing that? But we ended up narrowing as we talked to the faculty and staff who direct these programs and thinking about what is happening right now in these programs, and is there evidence that these programs promote equity on college campuses or not? And is within the ones that do or don't promote equity, are they talking about it in those terms? Because we know that on some campuses, we're not allowed to talk about it in those terms anymore. So how could our research support folks who are thinking big picture about student support, even when they're in an environment where they can't necessarily use those words anymore?
Matt Wittstein (17:10):
I appreciate having the actual question and you started to get into how you did it. And so that's the next question. What was your methodology to sort of understand what these different programs and universities and offices are doing to support mentoring?
Diana Gregory (17:32):
Well, I think part of that process was really just those long conversations about where are we? What is our landscape right now? So we really needed to take time to really listen to each other and to really find out what was current, what was going on. And as we did that, I think part of that process had to do with, there was a lot of beginning research came from just looking at websites and saying, "Well, here's what it says in this particular place, but then here's what programs are really viable and working right now." Or, "Here are the situations in which we see offshoots, where we see development of there's a formal program, but there's these informal relationships that are happening." So this sort of, it was at first, I think a bit of that, like the chaotic sort of big umbrella of finding out what was going on, and then also filtering down to see what was realistically going on.
Krista Craven (18:38):
So once we sort of got an understanding of the landscape at each of our institutions and what was going on, we created a survey that we sent to each of the sort of identified staff or program leaders for these academic peer mentoring programs at each of our institutions, which basically asked them to identify key elements and goals and priorities of their programs. And then we, from that, asked folks who completed the survey if they would be interested, the program leaders, who completed the survey, if they would be interested in having a one-to-one in- depth interview with us. So then we conducted in- depth interviews with the program leaders who accepted that invitation. And I think we had, was it 17 interviews with program leaders across our five institutions. And then the last piece, which we can talk about this in terms of unexpected terms, but our last piece, we had hoped to then do interviews with students who were part of these peer mentoring programs, starting with the peer mentors themselves.
(20:04):
And so a couple of us were successful in getting a few interviews with peer mentors, but that piece was much harder in terms of recruitment.
Maggie Safronova (20:12):
To follow up with Krista, I think there was also the element what we realized after fielding out the initial survey to different organizations is that we not surprisingly did not get a high rate of response because again, going back to the early stages of discussion, folks are busy, they may not have time to complete this. So in some of the cases, we reached out to folks on campus directly saying, "I'm doing this project. Would you be interested in talking about your program?" And in some cases, that actually was much more successful because for many of the respondents, it was much more comfortable to like, "Yeah, let's talk about it instead of me filling out this survey." So I think that's how we ended up with quite rich interviews from the program leaders.
Diana Gregory (21:12):
And to follow up on that, thanks, Maggie. I think that one thing that we did discover, Gabe, one of our researchers who's not here with us today, but Gabe's interviews with some of his leaders really pointed to the fact that the student involvement in the peer to peer was sort of there, but not as prominent. And so there, again, kind of going back to how throughout the whole process, things emerged as we were working on the surveys and the interviews, and then we started actually recording that and getting our data into a data set. And as we started looking at what we saw emerging from that, I think that's what then we realized we needed to come to some kind of direction. And we found a really good, and I need some help with the exact name of it, but we found a framework, an equity framework that really started us on a path of piecing together what it was that we were seeing.
Olivia Choplin (22:31):
It was a framework developed by Rawlinson and Willemont, and it was used as, it was sort of a comparative study of first year mentoring programs on their campus and combining that, combining student-centered learning theory with equity theories. And we ended up using that to help us code our interviews, do the qualitative coding of our interviews, and to lift up the places where program directors were either talking directly about practices within their programs that promote equity, or alluding to practices that promote equitable outcomes for students. And so we are still in stages of thinking about how we might expand their framework, but our initial piece of research came to the conclusion that, yes, these programs do increase equitable outcomes because they provide these peers, whether or not they're explicitly naming it that way, are offering access to their peers. They're increasing their understanding of things that might be hidden on a college campus, the hidden curriculum.
(24:00):
Basically, whether or not the programs are named as equity driven, they are drivers of more equitable outcomes for the students who engage in them, which is promising because we can frame things in terms of student success in places where we can't talk about equity.
Maggie Safronova (24:20):
One of the things that I think was really instrumental in the way that we started with the interviews and then started to do coding according to a specific framework, is that when we were designing the questions for the interview, we really wanted the leaders to tell us about how they see the program and describe the program and not necessarily describe it within relation to any given framework because that was kind of critical for us to think about if we were to review different programs, what is the type of evidence that would actually could be connected to different elements of creating opportunities and creating access for students? And so it took us a lot of work and now we're thinking of what can be expanded, what can be changed, but trying to find evidence from an instrument that is specifically designed not to really ask about it, but see if it comes through in the conversations of how the leaders view the program and how they describe the program, I think it was a really good contributing point for us to think about how leaders actually view and see their program without being prompted.
Matt Wittstein (25:44):
What were some of the questions that you asked your research participants and maybe highlight the ones that were the most fruitful in terms of the richness of the data?
Maggie Safronova (25:55):
We asked of what are the goals of the program. We asked about whether or not if there was any kind of alignment between the goals of the program and the bigger mission of the university to figure out the contextualization. And we then asked more of nitty-gritty logistics about the program of what is the role the faculty play? What is the role that staff play? What kind of preparation do students receive before they start working as mentors? What else did we ask?
Olivia Choplin (26:31):
Because we were also talking to folks who were not only running programs that were named peer mentoring, but we were talking to folks who were running academic support programs, peer academic support programs, so writing centers, tutoring centers, and explicitly the peer mentoring programs that referenced academic support in their things. So we weren't looking at only student life type peer mentoring programs. These were really peer mentoring programs that were supposed to be, or peer programs at all, that were supposed to be helping students with academic pieces. So we did actually ask folks if they saw peer mentoring as an important feature if they were in a program that wasn't explicitly named as peer mentoring. I think Maggie said something really important is that asking the interviewers those questions allowed us to see how they imagined their programs. And since we had sort of done an institutional deep dive to try to understand what is the context of this university, how does this university talk about mentoring?
(27:33):
How does this university or does this university talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, or any of those things, it allowed us to see long-term that places where the university or the institutional visions and values have an influence on how program directors of these programs see and conceive of their programs. So that was kind of one of the themes that we lifted up in our chapter that we have written about this.
Diana Gregory (28:04):
And I just want to piggyback on that a little bit by saying strategic plans. What the university strategic plans were were a good beginning point because in this three-year period, we could also track how some of those strategic plans changed over time and what impact that actually had on programs.
Matt Wittstein (28:26):
So as you conducted these interviews with a bunch of different programs that serve different goals, different needs and different university missions, what were the overall findings? What were the themes that you found that were persistent across programs? And then maybe what were some of the findings that were really unique, those sort of aha, like, "Oh, that's the thing that I might want to adopt if I were to create my own program."
Krista Craven (28:53):
I can highlight a bit building off what Olivia, Diana, and Meg shared a bit earlier, but I think what we saw across the board was clearly the way that peer mentoring programs or academic programs for students that have peer mentoring in them were framed was obviously with a very core focus of student support and ensuring that students get what they need, which inherently ensuring that all students get what they need as an equity driven focus, but the extent where we saw variation with the extent to which programs framed their work as equity driven, as rooted in principles of DEI. And so for example, in the institutions where the explicit priorities of the institution were about working towards equity and inclusion and that sort of thing, we saw that the The peer mentoring programs in those contexts were often very explicitly equity focused programs. So for particular groups of students and the kinds of supports that they might need.
(30:12):
So for example, a program, peer mentoring program specifically for indigenous students or peer mentoring programs specifically for racialized students. So that was sort of one of the key findings that we had. And then in the institutions where there was not an explicit equity focus or where equity and inclusion can't really be discussed explicitly because of the larger sociopolitical context that the institution is within, we saw that even though much of the work supports those equity goals, it's not framed as such, it's framed more broadly as student support.
Diana Gregory (30:55):
And yet I think one of the things that we did find is that peer mentors consistently linked improving access to educational opportunities and support sort of regardless of what the institutional type or structure was. And the lesson we really learned a lot about was really that training provided to peer mentors is a key component of introducing and implementing equitable practices within academic support systems.
Matt Wittstein (31:32):
Were there any other key components that y'all found for folks that are working within the peer mentoring landscape?
Maggie Safronova (31:40):
I think one of the elements that we also saw in the interviews across the campuses is that each one of the programs, regardless of what is it called, but any of the programs that are providing academic support to students through near peer learning requires awareness of its context. None of these programs really exist in a vacuum and they're navigating whatever the institutional context is, as well as the existing networks that support these programs. And so ultimately when we think about development of a program or implementation of the program, it's thinking of how's it going to fit within the bigger puzzle of the institution. And recognizing that also allows to be clear about what are the possibilities and realistically what are the limitations when it comes to the availability of time, when it comes to recruitment of students, sustainability of the program. And I think that that cannot be stressed enough is that element of it's not in a vacuum, the near peer learning will always support students.
(33:05):
That has been proven in the literature. It's the question of how do we create a program that fits in organically within the existing environment so it can continue to go on from a year to year.
Matt Wittstein (33:20):
So it sounds like you all started in one spot really wanting to understand the goals and the missions and the practices of mentoring programs, specifically peer mentoring programs that have more of an academic, or not necessarily more of an academic tilt, but definitely are supporting academic supports in addition to some of those student life supports. And you found your way to really looking closely through an interview process of what are some of the practices that are helping support equity related challenges while also support the missions of the programs themselves and the missions of the university. I'm really curious what other twists and turns that you found because we know that just like mentoring doesn't happen in a vacuum, research doesn't happen in a vacuum, that all of these projects have shifted a little bit as they're developed.
Olivia Choplin (34:15):
I think one of the interesting eurekas that came to us was as the political landscape shifted while we were doing this work, it was kind of an aha moment to recognize, like Maggie just said, that these peer programs, near peer learning is helpful, but also that we can help ... When we talk about this in the right ways, we can help people build programs that will increase student success for all students, even if we are not using language that different political contexts don't want us to use. So we know that if we focus on certain aspects of peer learning, like demystifying academic expectations or connecting students to resources that they need, those are things that are about access and equity, but we don't have to use the words access and equity. We can just say, "We're teaching students how to find the resources that they need." And I think it's important, particularly for folks who are feeling discouraged in places where they're not allowed to use those words, but they care deeply about student success.
(35:29):
I think it's important that they understand that there are pathways that we can still support that will provide more equitable access for all students. And we all want all of our students to be successful. That said, however, I think to me, it was interesting that when programs that we, the folks that we interviewed talked explicitly about equity-driven program goals when they were telling us about their programs, that did reinforce their capacity to support populations of students who have historically been less successful at universities. So pretending that these things aren't important is not serving the educational missions of our institutions and erasing the language doesn't really serve our best interests if we want all of our students to be successful. So those are some of the pieces that I think were interesting and also reassuring that we can still frame supporting students even if we can't talk about it in the ways that we wanted to talk about it before.
Diana Gregory (36:41):
Well, I think one thing was the concept of belonging. This kind of emerged for us very early on in our overall discussions and processes. And that seemed like a very big umbrella, but we did kind of come back to noticing though that concept of the comfort that you have when you feel like you belong, you belong in the university, it matters that you're there, you will be successful, you're in a community that supports you. All of that sort of has filtered through. And I do think it is a piece that is encouraging in the sense that we know how important it is for people to feel that sense of belonging in order to be successful. And there's so much in terms of unpacking all the different ways that people do feel that connection. And I think access is really important and that is something that we came back to again and again.
(38:00):
Just understanding how to find the resources that you need across all these institutions was a big ... It's something we've been working on as part of our next steps. We've been trying to think about what are the things that we can, from our research, expand and push out to help people understand how to have a really good peer-to-peer mentoring program.
Maggie Safronova (38:32):
I think another twist and turn that should be noted is as we were working on this project where we wanted to show that these programs matter and that many of these programs across campuses have common challenges. We also ran into the recognition that we as researchers also have common challenges as we are all working on multiple projects and working both as scholars, as well as practitioners, and all of us being various levels of faculty development, that balancing those things is also very challenging. We were all very passionate about this project that we came together to have this conversation, to make these program scenes, to figure out what are those structural similarities and differences. But there's also, I think, one of the things I'm noting of recognizing that we had this, as Olivia started with this very long research project, research question, we're going to do this and we're going to do that and going through that.
(39:42):
And I think one of the biggest twists and turns was being to like, let's pause, let's recalibrate and figure out how much can we realistically produce and what kind of product can we create that we are proud of and that we can put forth while balancing the 75 other balls that we have in the air.
Matt Wittstein (40:05):
Yeah. No one said going into academia, you'd learn to juggle. I guess it's only figurative. So that's a great segue. Diana, you brought it up directly of what are the next steps? What is your group continuing to work on? Or if you're not, another approach to that is, where do you hope that this research leads others to explore?
Krista Craven (40:32):
I could start with that. So we still meet quite regularly, so that's been lovely, at least say monthly or so. And then within that, we sort of have teams that have been working on a couple more papers and conceptual pieces since the book chapter that we developed for the seminar. But yeah, so one of the pieces that Diana, Gabe, and I have taken the lead on and that Olivia and Maggie are also contributing to, is expanding. So that framework that we mentioned, the Rolyson and Willimont framework around how to embed equity and social justice into peer mentoring programs, we expanded that framework through the data that came out of our interviews. And so there are some additional pieces that came out, especially the importance of identity-based mentoring. And so right now we're working on a piece that sort of illustrates the expanded framework and gives concrete ideas of what those practices look like on the ground between peers who are engaged in mentoring relationships and using the data that we have to sort of highlight those practices.
(42:07):
And then the other piece which Olivia and Maggie are taking the lead on perhaps they'd like to highlight is about the training piece. So how peer mentors are supported in doing this work in an effective and meaningful way, but I will pass that to you all.
Maggie Safronova (42:26):
So I think that what we learned from the interviews with the program leaders was that clearly training is one of the key elements to success for the peers, but we recognize that what we need now is evidence about the actual peer experience and how they went through the training and what are some of the practices that they're using. So Olivia and I are currently trying to figure out and design of what do we want to do as a follow-up and potentially reaching out to some of the peer mentors in getting some more evidence about their experiences, because ultimately we cannot make any really implications until we learn more about their experience.
Matt Wittstein (43:18):
Well, Diana, Krista, Maggie, Olivia, it was awesome talking to you. I also want to acknowledge your colleague, Gabe, who couldn't be on the call today, but y'all are doing some fantastic work and thank you for your time sharing and I wish you a lot of continued success.
Krista Craven (43:35):
Thank you so much. This was great.
Olivia Choplin (43:38):
Thanks, Matt. Good to see you all. Good to chat with you.
Diana Gregory (43:41):
Thank you, Matt. Really appreciate this.
Maggie Safronova (43:45):
Thank you everyone.
Matt Wittstein (43:56):
Limed: Teaching With a Twist is a podcast produced in collaboration with the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon University. For more information, including show notes and additional engaged learning resources, visit www.centerforengagedlearning.org. Limed Teaching With a Twist is a creation of Matt Witstein, associate professor of exercise science at Elon University. Original music for the show was composed and recorded by Kai Mitchell, an Elon University alumnus. If you enjoy our podcast, please take a few moments to subscribe, rate, review, and share our show. We aim to bring insightful and relevant content to educators each month, and we would love to hear from you. If you're interested in being a guest on the show, do not hesitate to reach out. Our most updated information can be found on the Center for Engaged Learning website. Thanks for listening and keep it zesty.