To help students flourish, the College of Engineering's Office of Undergraduate Studies is employing 11 trained upperclassmen and women as part-time peer advisors or mentors.

The initiative complements both the college's push to retain and graduate more of its students and Temple University's Fly in 4 program, which is geared towards making a Temple education as affordable as possible by helping students graduate on time.

"It's good for students to get the perspective of another student, particularly from someone who has taken the same engineering classes they are currently taking," says Shawn Fagan, the college's director of undergraduate studies since May 2014.

Since the beginning of this semester, five peer advisors have been greeting students who come to the Office of Undergraduate Studies Center. With four academic advisors responsible for 1,800 undergraduates, the peer advisors are able to drastically reduce waiting times by acting somewhat like triage nurses in hospital emergency departments.

Among their duties: educating students about course registration deadlines; helping students review their Degree Audits (DARS), course selection and registration; helping students navigate online university and College of Engineering resources. For more difficult issues, they help schedule an appointment with an academic advisor.

"I see a lot of students during the registration and drop-class periods," says Philadelphia resident Sarah Del Casale, BS chemistry/finance '12, who is now also a senior civil engineering student participating in the college's accelerated bachelor's/master's degree program. "But I also see a lot of people who have questions about how to get involved in student organizations and about tutoring help, which I also do at the center."

Another peer advisor is Sepehr Sabeti, a senior mechanical engineering student from Pittsburgh. "I wish student advising was available when I was a freshman," says the work-study student. "It saves a lot of time and students sometimes feel more comfortable asking questions of another student."

Fagan has also hired six experienced engineering students as peer mentors. They help any students, including those who might be struggling, to develop both academic skills and collegiate and professional goals. Their assistance includes helping students understand the engineering syllabus; master time management; communicate with faculty; use Blackboard effectively; maximize group study; and prep for tests.

"Often straight-A students in high school freak out when they get a D in their first calculus class," says Shaun George, a peer mentor who is a senior bioengineering student in the accelerated bachelor's/master's degree program. "We help them figure out how to get back on track."

George, an international student of Indian descent who was born and raised in Dubai, understands. He initially struggled at Community College of Philadelphia before he transferred to Temple two years ago. Now, however, he's a dean's list student, the program chair of Temple's Biomedical Engineering Society chapter and an undergraduate researcher in Associate Professor Andrew Spence's biomechanics laboratory.

"I used to try to tackle too much on my own," says the Temple badminton team player. "But there's never a shortage of people willing to help and point you in the right direction.

"For me, the biggest thing was just learning to ask for help."

Story by Bruce Beans