Impact of a College Student Academic Mentoring Program on Perceived Parental and Teacher Educational Involvement

This article examines the hypothesis that academic mentoring of college students improves perceived parental and teacher educational involvement. College students were randomly assigned to a 1-year academic mentoring program (proteges, n = 150) or a control group (n = 167) and completed questionnaires before, during, and after the intervention. Proteges perceived greater levels of parent and teacher educational involvement than did participants from the control group. However, the impact of the mentoring program on perceived parental involvement was found only among students who reported a secure relationship with their parents. Additional analyses suggest that some of these improvements were related to quality of the working alliance between mentors and proteges and to supportive behaviors exhibited by mentors during the intervention.