Female peer mentors early in college have lasting positive impacts on female engineering students that persist beyond graduation

This longitudinal field experiment examined the impact of female peer mentors on undergraduate female engineering students (N = 150). Students were randomly assigned to a female peer mentor, a male peer mentor, or no mentor for their first year. Results showed that having a female peer mentor was associated with improved psychological experiences, increased aspirations for postgraduate studies, enhanced emotional well-being, greater success in securing engineering internships, and higher retention in STEM majors through graduation and one year post-graduation, compared to the other groups. This low-cost intervention highlights the long-term benefits of female peer mentoring in supporting women's success in engineering.

Deborah J. Wu, Kelsey C. Thiem, Nilanjana Dasgupta