Concurrent Sessions A: Educating the Whole Peer Advisor/Mentor: Developing Peer Facilitated Programs that Empower Peers

As campuses increasingly recognize the value of peer advising or mentoring programs for educating and supporting the whole student, we need to ask, How well is this whole‐student philosophy incorporated into our approach to the peer advisors/mentors, themselves? Are peer mentors/advisors seen primarily as student workers hired to increase retention or ease staff workloads during times of budgetary stress, or are they understood as service learners whose social, emotional, and academic development is as central to the program as that of the students they support? This session describes two peer‐facilitated programs (one academic, one residentially‐based) that extend the whole student philosophy to their orientation toward and work with peer mentors/advisors. Facilitated by a faculty advisor, a first year specialist, and an undergraduate peer advisor/mentor involved in both programs, participants are offered concrete suggestions and invited to develop strategies for translating these ideas into their own programs across a range of settings