
Peer Mentors Help Students Navigate Health Graduate Programs
As a first-year student at Emory University, Leia Marshall walked into the Pathways Center to receive advice on her career goals.
She was a neuroscience and behavioral biology major who thought she might go to medical school. But after meeting with a peer mentor, Marshall realized she was more interested in optometry. “I didn’t really know a lot about the prehealth track. I didn’t really know if I wanted to do medicine at all,” she said. “Getting to speak to a peer mentor really affected the way that I saw my trajectory through my time at Emory and onwards.”
Emory opened the Pathways Center in August 2022, uniting five different student-facing offices: career services, prehealth advising, undergraduate research, national scholarships and fellowships, and experiential learning, said Branden Grimmett, associate dean of the center.
“It brings together what were existing functions but are now streamlined to make it easier for students to access,” Grimmett said.
The pre–health science peer mentor program engages hundreds of students each year through office hours, advising appointments, club events and other engagements, helping undergraduates navigate their time at Emory and beyond in health science programs.
The background: Prehealth advising has been a fixture at Emory for 20 years, led by a team of staff advisers and 30 peer mentors. The office helps students know the options available to them within health professions and that they’re meeting degree requirements to enter these programs. A majority of Emory’s prehealth majors are considering medicine, but others hope to study veterinary medicine, dentistry or optometry, like Marshall.
How it works: The pre–health science mentors are paid student employees, earning approximately $15 an hour. The ideal applicant is a rising junior or senior who has a passion for helping others, Grimmett said.
Mentors also serve on one of four subcommittees—connect, prepare, explore and apply—representing different phases of the graduate school process.
Mentors are recruited for the role in the spring and complete a written application as well as an interview process. Once hired, students participate in a daylong training alongside other student employees in the Pathways Center. Mentors also receive touch-up training in monthly team meetings with their supervisors, Grimmett said.
Peer mentors host office hours in the Pathways Center and advertise their services through digital marketing, including a dedicated Instagram account and weekly newsletter.
Peer-to-peer engagement: Marshall became a peer mentor her junior year and is giving the same advice and support to her classmates that she received. In a typical day, she said she’ll host office hours, meeting with dozens of students and offering insight, resources and advice.
“Sometimes students are coming in looking for general advice on their schedule for the year or what classes to take,” she said. “A lot of the time, we have students come in and ask about how to get involved with research or find clinical opportunities in Atlanta or on campus, so it really ranges and varies.”
Sometimes Marshall’s job is just to be there for the student and listen to their concerns.
“Once I met with a student who came in and she was really nervous about this feeling that she wasn’t doing enough,” Marshall said. “There’s this kind of impostor phenomenon that you’re not involved in enough extracurriculars, you’re not doing enough to set you up for success.”
Marshall is able to relate to these students and help them reflect on their experiences.
“That’s been one of my favorite parts of being a peer mentor: getting to help students recognize their strengths and guide them through things that I’ve been through myself,” she said.
In addition to assisting their classmates, peer mentors walk away with résumé experience and better career discernment, Grimmett said. “Often our students learn a lot about their own path as they’re in dialogue with other students. It’s a full circle for many of our peer mentors.”
“It’s funny to think about the fact that our role is to help others, but it really helps all of us as peer mentors as well,” Marshall said. “We learn to connect with a variety of students, and I think it’s been really valuable for me to connect with the advisers myself and get to know them better.”
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This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Branden Grimmett’s name.