Students Guiding Students

Every week, a dozen students at Minnesota State University, Mankato meet to learn about Anthropology 102. Michael Downes is waiting for them, armed with a comprehensive lesson plan, study materials and more. For the next hour, he’ll guide them as they tackle tricky concepts and confusing homework problems. 

The students would all agree that Downes is a great teacher—but he is not part of the University faculty. Actually, Downes is a student, too—an exercise science major in his junior year of studies, to be specific. But for this hour, he’s a student leader in the MavPASS Program. 

Downes has been working as a MavPASS student leader since fall of 2020, the same year that the program itself was implemented at the University.  

The program grew out of an initiative led by Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, Henry Morris, who wanted to find ways to support students in courses that had high DFW rates (calculated by the number of students who received Ds, Fs or withdrew from the course) and/or high opportunity gaps, defined as marked differences in performance between students of color and white students due to a systemic lack of opportunity in the educational system. Courses are usually those with high failure or withdrawal rates, especially if they are considered “gateway” courses into a certain major. 

A different way of helping 
 

A 2020 MavPASS session.

Director Laura Jacobi said the MavPASS program takes a different approach than traditional tutoring. MavPASS student leaders have not only taken the specific course they’re tutoring, but they also sit in on it again while they act as a MavPASS leader. 

“The focus is on the student struggling with the material, rather than the leader teaching something,” Jacobi explained. “So student leaders learn how to use these facilitation skills to draw things out of the students to get the students to do the work. They use different activities to really engage students and get them to problem solve and practice with one another.” 

“We want to avoid the idea of you either do MavPASS or you do tutoring,” added MavPASS Coordinator Madeline Wildeson. “What MavPASS offers that’s unique is that group experience and building community around a group of students who are in a similar situation in that they’re all taking this class together.” 

For Downes, this means attending all the classes for Anthropology 102 alongside his MavPASS attendees, to ensure that he knows the professor’s teaching style and can tailor his sessions to it. This fall, Downes will be taking the course for the fourth time. 

“I can tell that my strengths and leading MavPASS sessions has improved throughout each semester that I’ve done it,” he said. “I’ve had better success with attendance, and it’s been cool to watch my personal growth as well as the growth of the program.” 

Encouraging numbers 

MavPASS Coordinator Madeline Wildeson

The program started with five courses and 17 undergraduate student leaders, growing every semester. For spring 2021, there were 18 courses and 41 student leaders. The attendance rate has also continued to rise. For the inaugural semester, classes saw about 23.5 percent attendance among students, but that grew to 35 percent on average by last semester. 

Data is showing that students boost their course grade by an average of one full letter grade by attending sessions. In addition, the DFW drops to zero when students attend 10 or more sessions, compared to the 25-30 percent DFW rate these classes have on average otherwise. 

Going into the fall semester of 2021-2022, Jacobi said there will be 27 courses that offer MavPASS opportunities, with more than 60 student leaders. She said the main goal is to just continue getting word out of the program so that more students can benefit from it—no matter what grade they currently have in a class. 

“It’s open for everyone,” she said. “It’s not meant to target certain groups of people, and I think that takes away the stigma of it. We have students from all different levels who come to MavPASS, and it helps more students to succeed, lowers DFW rates, and closes the opportunity gap while supporting all students who wish to come.” 

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