Webinar Recording & Slides
About the Webinar
In 2018, Montclair State University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) launched a peer mentorship program with a bold premise: match every incoming freshman with an upper-class mentor using a detailed, 31-question algorithm that accounts for first-gen status, major, residency, home life, and personal goals. What started as 300 matches has grown into a program serving 500+ students a year — and CHSS is now exploring an opt-out model that would extend mentorship to its entire incoming class of roughly 850 first-year students.
Along the way, the program did something rarer than scaling: it built the infrastructure to prove it was working, and working for the students who needed it most.
Join Courtney Cunningham, Assistant Dean for Student Services, and Leslie Wilson, Associate Dean, both of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State University, for a candid look at how Montclair grew a college-funded pilot into an initiative reaching hundreds of students each year — and what the data reveals about mentorship's role in retention, equity, and belonging.
In this webinar, you’ll learn:
- The retention math that got attention. How mentored students posted 79.4%–86.4% one-year retention and outpaced non-mentored peers in four-year graduation rates across every cohort measured from 2021–2024.
- How participation supported FGLI students. The participation data showed Pell-eligible and first-generation students engaged at higher rates than the general CHSS population.
- What institutional buy-in actually looks like. The funding journey from pilot to large initiative.
- The human infrastructure behind the numbers. How 6,000–7,000 mentor-mentee text exchanges a year and 68 flags routed to financial aid and academic support add up to real, measurable intervention — not just good intentions.
- What's next. How Montclair is approaching a potential opt-out model for the full incoming class, plus early exploration of expansion into transfer student and career mentorship.
Featured Speakers
Courtney Cunningham
Assistant Dean for Student Services, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Montclair State University
Courtney Cunningham is Assistant Dean for Student Services in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, leading the Student Success Center. She oversees student engagement programming and strategic retention initiatives. Courtney previously served as the Director of Academic Advising in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from Drew University and an M.A.T. from Montclair State University.
Leslie Wilson, PhD
Associate Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Montclair State University
Leslie Wilson serves as Associate Dean for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State University. He holds a B.A. and M.P.S. from Cornell University, an M.A. from Hunter College, and a Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate School.