An Educational Brief On Belay : Peer - Mentoring and Adventure Education for Women Faculty in Engineering

This paper reports on an intervention program designed to cultivate effective peer mentoring among a small group of women engineering faculty members from different academic institutions. Adventure education, comprised of linked intellectual and physical challenges in an outdoor setting, was chosen as the vehicle to transform the group into a highly functioning team. Based on a qualitative analysis of postworkshop essays, the intervention resulted in informational, psychosocial, and instrumental mentoring benefits that could serve to support and enhance the participants’ academic careers. This paper provides a blueprint for the design of similar workshops for groups that could benefit from additional peer-mentoring and networking opportunities in the engineering academy.