Program Structure
The Graduate Peer Mentor Program is a self‑supporting graduate program with distinct but collaborative roles. Together, these roles ensure the program remains responsive, ethical, and sustainable.
The Graduate Peer Mentor, Oversight Graduate Assistant, and Outreach Graduate Assistant roles are available to graduate students through a competitive selection process and are designed to reflect a range of disciplines, lived experiences, and stages of graduate study.
- Provide one-to-one and group peer mentoring
- Normalize graduate experiences and transitions
- Support reflection, goal‑setting, and navigation
- Connect students to SGS and campus resources
- Work within clearly defined boundaries and referral pathways
- Strengthens visibility and awareness of the program
- Supports communication, promotion, and engagement
- Helps connect graduate students to mentoring opportunities
- Builds relationships between SGS initiatives and the graduate community
- Coordinates and supports the overall program
- Ensures ethical practice, consistency, and quality
- Supports training, reflection, and professional development
- Acts as a point of accountability and escalation when needed
The program also provides graduate students in mentoring, oversight, and outreach roles with structured professional development, leadership experience, and transferable employment skills.
All Graduate Peer Mentors and GAs engage in ongoing training and reflective practice, including: role clarity and professionalism, ethics, boundaries, and referral, inclusive communication and facilitation, navigating complex or ambiguous student situations, program evaluation and continuous improvement, and career articulation and transferable skill development. Training emphasizes judgment, responsibility, and collaboration, rather than advice‑giving or problem‑solving.
Participation in the Graduate Peer Mentor Program supports development in nationally recognized skill areas, including: professional communication, leadership and teamwork, equity, diversity, and inclusion, teaching and mentorship, and project and program coordination. The program is intentionally framed as paid, professional graduate experience, not volunteer services.