The University of California Santa Barbara has announced that a student-to-student mentoring program called BIOME (Biology Mentoring and Engagement) was recently awarded a three-year, $600,000 education grant from the National Science Foundation to help build a similar mentoring structure for students completing the second year.
According to UC Santa Barbara’s The Current, the original BIOME program was started by assistant teaching professor Mike Wilton to help first-year biology students get support from their upper-division peers. About half of UC Santa Barbara biology majors leave biology prior to graduation, mirroring national trends.
Wilton, who came to UC Santa Barbara in 2015, sought to stem this attrition. Along with his colleague Eduardo Gonzalez, he designed the first BIOME seminar with tips on how to study science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses in the face of academic challenges faced by first-year biology students.
Key to this approach are mentors, who at only about two years older than the lower-division students serve as models, helping the younger ones navigate the system to their success.
With the National Science Foundation grant, mentors in the program will now be paid, allowing more third- and fourth-years — particularly the ones who have to work — to devote time to mentorship without losing income.
According to UC Santa Barbara, the funding also allows BIOME to expand to UC Irvine. As the programs progress, Wilton and colleagues will be able to study the effectiveness of the mentorship structure, while also assisting students toward their goals in real-time.
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