Reverse mentoring in higher education inverts ‘traditional’ roles, positioning students as ‘mentors’ and staff as ‘mentees’, with a view to educating and empowering both sides and catalysing cultural change through sharing and discussion of unique lived experiences in safe environments.
Introduction and background
The project was piloted in 2021 by Educational Engagement and was supported by Leeds University Union (LUU). Following the pilot’s success, the scheme was expanded in 2022 and developed into a research study, supported by Associate Professor Rachael O’Connor.
The aims of the study were to assess the impact of staff/student reverse mentoring relationships on:
- students’ feelings of value, visibility and belonging
- staff understanding and appreciation of challenges faced by under-represented students
- the daily practice and influence of institutional leaders within their areas of responsibility.
Who was involved?
Student Mentors self-identified as being from a background underrepresented in the overall student community at Leeds. Students were invited to apply if they self-identified within any of the following labels/groupings: UK ethnically minoritised, Mature (21+) entry, International, and/or widening participation background communities.
Mentees were staff holding a senior leadership position at the University at the time of participation. They were identified and invited to participate by the Director of Educational Engagement in collaboration with Deans and select members of the University Executive Group who were aware of the aims of this project, having taken part in 2021.
This project involved 26 matched pairs and 25 pairs successfully completed the mentoring activity.
Initial findings
Prior to the project, students and staff were asked to score a series of statements on a Likert scale from ‘strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (5). They were then asked to score the same statements following their participation.
Of the 26 student mentors, 25 completed the pre- and 20 completed the post-mentoring questionnaire. 16 staff mentees completed the pre- and 7 completed the post-mentoring questionnaire.
At the end of the project, participants were invited to have a reflective chat with a member of the project team about their experiences of being a mentor/mentee. Reflective chats were carried out with 8 mentors and 15 mentees.
The following information provides examples from our triangulated analysis of the survey scales and the qualitative discussions under headings linked to the study’s key aims.
Students’ feelings of value, visibility and belonging
Student mentors showed increased feelings of belonging (average score increased from 3.08 to 3.7) and value (average score increased from 3.13 to 3.45) as students at the University of Leeds after taking part in reverse mentoring.
The quotes from student mentors below highlight increased sense of belonging, visibility of identity (for staff and students) and importance of being their authentic selves, increasing their sense of value as individuals within the University:
Mentor 1: “I think I actually felt more part of the university after this experience.”
Mentor 2: “We found that both of us had like working class backgrounds … that definitely kept coming up because obviously we both related … it … was nice to see that someone very high up in the University like had these types of experiences and came from, you know, different backgrounds as well and also wasn't like forgetting the background that they came from and still carried that with them. I think for me, that was something I didn't expect to see. So I was very happy about that.”
Staff understanding and appreciation of challenges faced by under-represented students
At the end of the reverse mentoring experience, staff mentees felt they had a better understanding of the challenges faced by students from underrepresented groups (average score increased from 2.81 to 3.17) as well as why these students may find it more challenging to engage (average score increased from 3.06 to 4.17) and feel less confident (average score increased from 3.75 to 4.50) at the University.
After the mentoring meetings, students also reported having more confidence in senior members of staff’s
The quotes from staff mentees below demonstrate the learning process staff went through and the value of having a safe space and dedicated time to discuss issues relating to underrepresentation in detail with a current student:
Mentee A: “It's made me much more kind of authentically engaged with those issues [of underrepresentation] because I can think about something that I've discussed in depth with someone in a friendly, positive space”
Mentee B: “…this really made me think differently about what inclusion means in the classroom… and how complex inclusion really is”
The daily practice and influence of institutional leaders within their areas of responsibility
The reflective chats highlighted that, weeks after the end of the project, mentors and mentees were thinking about the wider impact of their conversations. Student mentors reflected on their feelings of influence beyond the one-to-one conversation with their mentee. For example:
Mentor 4: “The overall thing for me was the fact that there's somebody there in the authority, they didn't just listen, you know, they actually took on board what we said. They followed it up.”
Mentees began to think about what they might do differently in the future as well as what they had already had opportunity to reflect on and do differently.
Mentee D: “... I learned that the fact that if we are really, really going to think about the whole notion of lifelong continuous learning, whether that's online, whether that's face to face in whatever form of delivery, we have got quite a lot to think through and just taking the world of 18 to 21 [year olds] and imposing [it] on ... mature learners is not [a] good idea...”
Mentee A: “... one thing that we might do a bit better would be to think about ... opportunities that we put out for kind of networking, community building … That might be really difficult for people to do, so actually being more intentional about how we do those things ... might be a good thing … I'm going to think in my own role about how we do that kind of thing … differently.”
Recommendations from the research team:
- Institutional reverse mentoring is embedded as an annual activity at the University, receiving Executive-level endorsement for the expectation that staff in relevant leadership and key student education and experience roles participate on a semi-frequent basis.
- A School-level pilot is included in the next round of institutional reverse mentoring to begin exploring the impact and outcomes of this alternative format.
- Ongoing delivery and evaluation of the reverse mentoring project becomes a key responsibility of the Student Success Unit in Educational Engagement. The collaboration with Leeds University Union, particularly the relevant Exec members, continues and the project team receives the support of a funded student research assistant each year in order to enhance the research and implement the outcomes.
- A clearer, more structured framework for mentoring sessions is provided to participants to better guide the experience. This will include providing prompts/topics for each meeting, setting firmer expectations and a pre-agreed schedule of activities to increase engagement with the longitudinal aspects of the evaluation and research.
- An annual University reverse mentoring report is created which updates on that year’s project, as well as what actions have been identified and taken across campus as a result.
Report compiled by the reverse mentoring team: Steven Gleadall, Lucinda Walker, Lauren Barraclough (Educational Engagement) and Rachael O’Connor (School of Law).