Transformational Mentoring in University of Minnesota CoCurricular Leadership Programs

Ronald Frazzini, Ph.D. Alexander Fink, Ph.D. Student University of Minnesota Student Affairs

Abstract
Programs for transformational mentoring at the University of Minnesota strive to incorporate Sharon Daloz Parks three important concepts: (1) becoming critically aware of ones own composing of reality, (2) self-consciously participating in an ongoing dialogue toward truth, and (3) cultivating a capacity to respondto actin ways that are satisfying and just (Parks, 2000, p. 6). Results of a pilot study on the effectiveness of achieving Parks goals in a mentoring program designed for developing leadership and personal growth show promising development of the three concepts. By examining two years of student evaluations and mentor feedback, the study examines the process of transformational development resulting from leadership program mentoring. The co-curricular program LeaderQuest has been in operation for twenty-nine years with a structure that includes a formal mentorship pairing of a student with an older adult, a peer mentoring relationship with another student participant and weekly seminars on leadership concepts. Participants are drawn from across all undergraduate departments while the mentors are from faculty, staff and community, representing a variety of professions for interdisciplinary interaction. A mentor coordinator, aided by a team of experienced mentors, creates mentor pairings based on application and interview information from students and potential mentors. Training is based on experience level, and the mentor coordinator maintains communication during the program. This pilot study and presentation is a precursor to a larger study identifying specific practices for mentor training. Data is available from programs that serve a broad spectrum of specific interests and groups, and range in purpose from career development to personal growth.

Introduction
Opportunities for study, thought and interaction in a challenging environment are key to the development of critical thinking and self-awareness in young college aged adults. Supported by Sharon Daloz Parks, these important levels of maturity are achieved by providing situations [that] present us with both the challenge and the resources to accomplish this development (Parks, 2000, p. 40). LeaderQuest provides the context for this challenge in the form of seminars, large and small group discussion and peer and community mentoring for a wide diversity of career and cultural interests. The three concepts of Parks represent a transition in themselves, moving from self-awareness, then realizing the confidence to participate in a dialogue with the new awareness, and finally pro-actively responding or acting as a result of the dialogue. Mentors and students often recognize these changes, but finding data to support them can be challenging. Our data, while anecdotal, shows development in these three areas, and gives us a basis to further improve training for mentors, as well as define new paths for the LeaderQuest program.

Transformational Mentoring in University of Minnesota Co-Curricular Leadership Programs

Mentoring Opportunities at the University of Minnesota

These opportunities include career-based programs at each of the colleges, leadership programs through Student Affairs, and many formal and casual programs offered in the large student club and athletics structure at the university. While the purposes of each program are as diverse and numerous as the number of programs available, programs centering on career are prevalent. Transformational versus Informational Mentoring These two concepts are valuable on a university campus, and offer specific results to a broad spectrum of students at different points in their development. Career Directed Programs (Informational Mentoring) Career directed programs outnumber other types of formal mentoring on the University of Minnesota campus. They are typically oriented toward the students future careers in a specific discipline, with mentor relationships based on common career interests. Mentoring curriculum is focused primarily on discussing career opportunities, networking and coaching to students, and is deemed Informational mentoring. While some of these mentoring relationships may suggest personal development, the mentor usually does not take responsibility for actualizing this development, and the student does not enter with expectations that personal development will occur (and any personal development is more likely incidental than intentional). While we agree that informational mentoring is useful on college campuses, we believe that these programs too frequently serve as the only mentoring opportunities available to students and eclipse the need for mentoring programs focused on personal development. From the universitys Mentor Connection organization, the remarks below indicate successful experiences in the career-centered program: I have a better understanding of what is expected of me in the workplace. She really gave me an honest understanding of what kind of jobs are out there and what Id be getting myself into. I have a better understanding of how my degree can relate to a job field after college. Programs Directed Toward Personal Development In contrast, transformational mentoring is focused on the personal growth and development of those mentored exclusive of career. This type of growth can be viewed through numerous frameworks, including the Social Change Model of Leadership Development (Astin and Astin, 1996), self-authorship student development theory (Baxter Magolda, 2004), or frameworks of ethical and moral development (Perry, 1998). We have chosen to analyze the LeaderQuest mentor program through the lens of Sharon Daloz Parks, who writes that mentoring should assist students in (1) becoming critically aware of ones own composing of reality, (2) selfconsciously participating in an ongoing dialogue toward truth, and (3) cultivating a capacity to respondto actin ways that are satisfying and just (Parks, 2000, p. 6). Termed transformational, a successful mentoring experience broadens and matures the student as a person. Distinct from informational mentoring, it is not focused on the transmission of advice, rather it is focused on providing students with opportunities to change, to grow, to transform themselves and their relationships with others. 2

Transformational Mentoring in University of Minnesota Co-Curricular Leadership Programs

LeaderQuest as an Engine for Personal Development LeaderQuest is focused not only on individual mentoring for development, but includes large and small group discussions, retreats, peer and group mentoring, and community projects. Created in 1982, the LeaderQuest program provided a specific forum for students who held defined leadership positions on campus. From Greek system officers, student government members, and diverse student clubs, LeaderQuest provided an active workshop for problem solutions needed by these young leaders. The program supported up to fifty students with an equal complement of mentors, and touched on pertinent leadership issues presented by outside speakers then reinforced in workshop seminars one evening a week for three hours. The present program focuses on personal development and evolving awareness of self, examining the core leadership elements of ethics, problem solving, goal setting and development of a process for critically thinking about a personal life direction. Weekly seminars provide a forum for exploration of these core elements, and are developed around large and small group discussions of the topic for the evening. Interdisciplinary mentors attempt to take these discussion elements to a more personal level in one-on-one conversations. Established by the mentor/student pair, specific goals for the mentoring activity provide a framework for the threemonth activity, and in many instances, the mentor and student continue to meet following conclusion of the formal program. The development of leadership in LeaderQuest program participants is based on the Social Change Model of Leadership Development created by Astin and Astin (1996). At the core of this model are several key beliefs: leadership is concerned with social change, leadership is collaborative, leadership is a process rather than a position, and leadership should be based in values (p. 10). The LeaderQuest program embodies these ideals in its curriculum and mentoring process. In addition to encouraging students to create social change, emphasis is placed on students achieving a knowledge of self that includes an understanding of their values, strengths, and interests. Following the model, LeaderQuest asks students to consider leadership from the perspective of themselves (as individuals), groups, and broader society (p. 19), while the mentoring relationship serves to reinforce progress toward this goal. Structure of Peer Mentoring Within LeaderQuest Peer mentoring succeeds within the LeaderQuest structure as a dyad or triad of students who meet regularly throughout the program. Each dyad meets once a week, and the topics for discussion are open to whatever experiences are pertinent at the time. Three students form the triads, and these are rotated each week to provide new opinions and reflections for each participant. With more than 90% of students from 2006 data saying it is an essential part of LeaderQuest, its combination with large group discussion and community mentoring offers a powerful transformational resource. Selection, Training and Matching of Community Mentors For a program as solidly in place as LeaderQuest, a pool of mentors exist that have shown themselves to be excited, caring and curious about each of the students with which they are paired. Finding new mentors is a process of referral from known friends, acquaintances and active mentors. The primary characteristics we look for are a diversity of interests, a professional career and curiosity and caring about students. Each has a profile that is compared to an accepted LeaderQuest student profile with the basic notion of matching common interests whether they 3

Transformational Mentoring in University of Minnesota Co-Curricular Leadership Programs

are hobbies, sports or work directions. A committee consisting of the program director, the mentor coordinator, the student coordinator and one to two other active mentors then defines the match. Based on responses and feedback from past programs, need for training in certain areas is evident, and probably the single-most difficult area for a new mentor is where to start a conversation dealing with these personal issues, and how one keeps it going. Training emphasis is on the examination of goals, and why a student has selected a certain path. The training units, broadly stated, consist of these topics: 1. Review the role of mentors for personal development. 2. Define and understand the difference between mentoring and advising. 3. Outline mentor expectations to enhance personal development such as: Comparing strengths between you and the student. Establishing one or two specific goals for the mentoring relationship. Reviewing ways to approach the achievement of those goals. 4. Mentor feedback in the form of a group meeting partway through the program to evaluate successes, failures and new directions if necessary. 5. Ending the mentoring relationship Fourteen of the 19 students in the 2006 survey listed the mentor relationship as extremely valuable, three as valuable and two as somewhat valuable. Evaluation of Mentoring Survey Data Taking the original premises from Parks, we have attempted to draw some relationships to these concepts from our limited data set. Central to the core effort is the development of selfawareness and critical thinking, which is the first of Parks concepts. The Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership (MSL Study, 2006), conducted in 2005 has direct reference to changes in self-awareness with influences of mentoring, leadership positions, work and other campus involvement. There is no clear way to isolate the effects of the mentoring component from other influences, so we see self-awareness grow as a result of a series of involvements, with mentoring as one component. Two examples of MSL data from the University of Minnesota, one of selfawareness as a function of having a mentor, and that of having leadership positions are shown below. The change from never met to many times is statistically significant.
Mentoring as a Component of Self Awareness
Impact on a Scale of 1== No Impact and 5= Significant Impact

Self Awareness as a Function of Short Term Leadership Positions

4.5 4.4

4.4 4.3 Never Met Once Several Many

Impact on a Scale from 1=None to 5=Significant

4.2 4.1 4 3.9 3.8 3.7 3.6 3.5

Af fa irs ty oy er ity m m un St ud en t Fa cu l

4.3 4.2 4.1 4 3.9 3.8 3.7 3.6 Never One Time Several Times Many times Frequency of Leadership Positions

St ud en t

Em pl

Mentor Type and Meeting Frequency

th er

Co

Transformational Mentoring in University of Minnesota Co-Curricular Leadership Programs

It is apparent that students who are involved with campus life in many ways are more likely to seek out a mentor, and that the more experience they have with other life situations, the greater the likelihood of an increased self-awareness. Also interesting is that impact is statistically insensitive to mentor type. We then explored LeaderQuest surveys conducted at the conclusion of years 2005 and 2006 where students were asked to evaluate the program. The question asked (except where noted) was Describe the relationship with your mentor (or student). While anecdotal, they provide some insight for the overall impact of the program, and some specific views on the mentoring component itself. We consider the comments in the context of the three concepts of Parks listed above using a sequential process. First, one achieves awareness then gains the confidence to participate in a dialogue with that awareness, and finally pro-actively responds or acts as a result of the dialogue. 1. Becoming critically aware of ones own composing of reality As a statement of self-awareness, we can consider this to represent an increased consciousness and acceptance of our values, strengths and weaknesses. Feedback from LeaderQuest students reflecting this growing awareness can be summarized in these examples: I learned about my self identity and the habits I have that need to be improved on. My mentor emphasized the importance of knowing myself and how journaling is the most effective way to do that. He shared with me his own personal stories and what I could learn from his experiences. Very supportive and made me learn so much about myself. I really appreciated meeting with him and I appreciate how well he got to know the person that I am. The relationship I had with my mentor was life-altering. My mentor took the time to really get to know me and know how I think. His interest in mentoring was to get to know me and to assist me in finding my values and sense of self. My mentor was always able to give useful insight into areas of my life that I hadn't been able to see before. More importantly, he instilled a confidence in me that I have never had before. He was willing to listen to the problems I was having with my leadership skills and help me diagnose them. Without too much of a stretch, the elements of developing self-consciousness can be seen in each of these and the vast majority of the other responses we found. What is also evident is the nature of the questions that were being asked by the mentors that we will speak of later. 2. Self-consciously participating in an ongoing dialogue toward truth Growing from self-awareness, this second element of Parks three concepts is intimately tied to a maturing self-confidence that recognizes and supports the dialogue. Again looking to LeaderQuest data with the same question: I admired his ability to consistently engage in conversations and show genuine interest in the topics I shared. Over time I've become more open with my mentor, hes been a great listener and really helps me to process how I feel about my future, leadership, and just societal issues in general. 5

Transformational Mentoring in University of Minnesota Co-Curricular Leadership Programs

That I don't need to know what I want to do in 5-10 years, but I need to explore the possibilities in each option and be an active learner. I learned about the contrast between business and technical work, and more about the field of electrical engineering. My mentor also expanded my views on various problems in the world, the country, and the workplace. And to the question What was the most important thing you learned from LQ?: The value of honesty. I never realized before that you could become close to people instantly by just telling the truth about yourself. Not surface truths, but deeper truths that have meaning to you. It changes a relationship from strangers to trusted friends. As an another example of what students were looking for in their mentoring experience, this relationship was not something the student deemed a success: Jeff and I had a friendship relationship. It never really developed into a learning dynamic. He and I were both extremely busy and therefore, only met a few times not giving us a chance to truly discuss places for improvement. It left me somewhat, unsatisfied on a self improvement level. The comment also points to MSL data on the effectiveness of meeting frequency. 3. Cultivating a capacity to respondto actin ways that are satisfying and just Parks third point is taken as the ability to take the newfound self-confidence and act with it. To the question what is the most important thing you learned from LeaderQuest? we have these responses: How I can actually change things. How to observe things and think about how I can change them. You are beautiful, you do have the power, and you do make a difference in peoples lives. To be humble, to be passionate about something, to work hard for what you are passionate for. That one can learn sooo much from a single interaction with a person they never knew before and it is a matter of effective communication and knowing the right questions to ask that enable a person to find the 'hidden treasures' within someone else. LQ has also empowered me to realize my own power as an individual and the impact that I have on my community. I definitely see that I have a strong personality. However, with power comes responsibility and I need to be aware of what/how I use my power and where I choose to put my time because this defines who I am and what I will become. The program also has a community project experience that puts each student with a group, usually in an area of the surrounding community that has special needs. In any case, it is an experience that stretches almost all the students beyond their comfort zone, and is an ideal way to apply the newly realized self-confidence.

Evaluation
This study has provided an example of a sustained transformational mentoring opportunity for undergraduate students. We have distinguished between informational and transformational mentoring opportunities utilizing evaluation data from the LeaderQuest program examined 6

Transformational Mentoring in University of Minnesota Co-Curricular Leadership Programs

through the lens of Sharon Daloz Parks three concepts. Transformational Mentoring was the goal, and it is clear that it occurred in conversations between mentor and student. The above survey comments on mentoring all reflect change in the students thinking, outlook and their existing process of evaluating and reacting to life. Different than career or informational mentoring, these comments show change that follows what has been defined as stages of development by Robert Kegan (Kegan, 1982) and Laurent Daloz (Daloz, 1999) among others, and initially proposed by Jean Piaget (Piaget, 1973). It is also encapsulated in Parks three concepts. This kind of transformation is a goal of the leadership mentoring process, even if it is limited to a new awareness of concepts not previously considered. Mentor/student conversations are key to the programs concept of development process, and the meaningfulness with which conversations develop is formed by a growing trust between the mentoring pair. From the LeaderQuest experience, these conversations develop from common interests that are emphasized in the matching process, and survey responses indicated challenging questions resulting in part from the match. As Stephen Brookfield has suggested, Challenge is central to helping people think critically, (Brookfield, p. 90) and a significant emphasis for mentors in the program is to pose challenging questions. Brookfield goes on to say that the right to challenge someone must be earned, (91) and that is based upon the trust inherent in the developing mentoring relationship. A great majority of the students embarking in the program are coming from dualistic concepts of an authoritarian right or wrong and are working toward more refined attitudes of contextualism. It is the mentors responsibility to softly question these areas, or in the words of Laurent Daloz, compartments, and offersimply a little light in the right places and lots of support. (Daloz, p. 83) The mentors personality is key in this effort, and our evolving training tries to augment the mentors innate skills.

Recommendations
It is our goal that this study serves as an impetus for further research on transformational mentoring in college settings. Our plan is to use this preliminary study to do a series of surveys with past mentors and students with specific questions relating to the present concepts of transformational mentoring. We also intend to compare the outcomes of students participating in these programs against those of non-participants. In this manner, we can develop a broader and deeper base of research defining the impact of transformational mentoring to the personal development of undergraduate students. We have suggested that there may be a common set of practices for training transformational mentors including the need for interdisciplinarity. We believe that there is an opportunity to develop a rich and specific set of shared training practices for mentors, and that the development of such practices is essential to the proliferation of these important mentoring opportunities on college campuses. Part of our intended research would be the development of a shared set of successful practices in training transformational mentors. Because of the variety and depth of mentor programs on campus, we believe we have the resources at the University of Minnesota to accomplish these tasks.

Transformational Mentoring in University of Minnesota Co-Curricular Leadership Programs

References
Astin, H., & Astin, A. (1996). A Social Change Model of Leadership Development: Guidebook. Los Angeles: University of California Education Research Institute. Baxter Magolda, M., & King, P. (2004). Learning Partnerships: Theory and Models of Practice to Educate for Self-Authorship. Sterling: Stylus Publishing. Brookfield, S. (1987). Developing Critical Thinkers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc. Daloz, L. (1999). Mentor: Guiding the Journey of Adult Learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kegan, R. (1982). The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (2009). Mentor Connection Student Survey Results. University of Minnesota, Alumni Association. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Parks, S. D. (2000). Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Perry, J. W. (1999). Forms of Ethical and Intellectual Development in the College Years. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1973). Memory and Intelligence. London: Routledge. University of Maryland. (2006). Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership: University of Minnesota Final Report. ACPA Educational Leadership Foundation & NASPA Foundation. Maryland: The National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs. University of Minnesota LeaderQuest Program. (2005-2006). Program Evaluation . Minneapolis, MN, USA.