Episode 82: Erin Mayhood on Mentoring for Student Success
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What role can mentoring play in student success? What are the surprising attributes that make for a good match? How can mentors connect students to other support on campus and online? How can data inform effective mentoring, reporting, and retention? How can working with a partner bring expertise, consistency, and scale? We dive into these fascinating questions and more with Erin Mayhood, CEO of Mentor Collective.
In the complex landscape of higher education, we often look to new facilities, advanced learning management systems, or revised curricula to move the needle on graduation rates. While these investments are vital, they often miss the most fundamental driver of student persistence: the feeling of being seen, supported, and believed in.
As Erin Mayhood, CEO of Mentor Collective, points out, human potential isn't unlocked by information alone. It is unlocked through connection. In a recent conversation on the Connected College Podcast, we explored how mentoring acts as the "connective tissue" of the student experience, transforming abstract support services into concrete pathways for success.
Defining Student Success: Beyond the Degree
We often talk about student success in terms of "lagging indicators"—grades, attendance, and graduation rates. However, by the time these metrics signal a problem, it’s often too late to intervene. To truly support students, we must shift toward a holistic definition of success.
Success is about supporting the whole person. It involves building a student’s confidence, fostering a sense of belonging, and helping them gain clarity on their path. While earning a degree remains imperative—with over 70% of jobs still requiring a credential—the "durable skills" gained through relationships, such as adaptability and communication, are what truly prepare students for what comes next.
Mentoring as the Great Connector
Colleges and universities have invested heavily in advising, mental health services, and tutoring. Yet, students often don't know these resources exist, or they feel uncomfortable "raising their hand" to ask for help. This is where mentoring fills the gap.
A mentor acts as a navigator. They don't just offer advice; they provide the encouragement needed to walk into a tutoring center or the emergency funds office. When systemic issues—like food insecurity or social anxiety—are addressed alongside a mentor, student outcomes can actually double. Mentoring stitches together the curriculum, the campus resources, and the student's personal journey into a seamless whole.
Moving from Chance to Intentionality
Most campuses have mentoring happening somewhere, but it’s often siloed or left to chance. To make mentoring a true engine for success, institutions must move toward a systemic, data-informed approach. This means looking beyond just departmental matches.
Interestingly, the strongest initial connections often come from shared life experiences rather than shared majors. Matching a first-generation student with a mentor who also navigated the "hidden language" of campus creates immediate trust. By using data to jumpstart these personal connections, colleges can build "connection networks" that support a student from orientation through their first job.
Breaking Silos through a Culture of Mentorship
The biggest obstacle to student success is often the silos we build between academic affairs, student affairs, career services, and alumni relations. Students don't see these divisions; they just see their college.
A culture of mentorship breaks these barriers. It encourages "help-seeking behavior" and teaches students how to network—a skill that is unfortunately atrophying in an age of screen addiction. By embedding mentoring into the institutional fabric—during orientation, through text-based communication, and via integrated data dashboards—we create an environment where no student has to figure it out alone.
Summary: The Future of the Connected College
Mentoring is not a one-time event; it is a life cycle. It starts with peer support for belonging, moves to alumni connections for career discovery, and continues into the professional world. When institutions prioritize these relationships as much as they prioritize their infrastructure, they don't just see better data—they see a more vibrant, joyful, and successful community.
Episode 82 Transcript
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Erin Mayhood: Students who have a mentor are more likely to graduate. Students who have a mentor, more likely to feel like they belong. When systemic issues that are, impacting the student's journey are also addressed alongside the mentor and the institution, those outcomes at least double. And so we've seen this in the data.
Erin Mayhood: It is. Truly a labor of love between, the students, their mentor, and all the fantastic people who are working at colleges and university around this country. And by working together, we can have incredible success.
Elliot Felix: That was Aaron Mahood, CEO of Mentor Collective. We had a great conversation about the role of mentoring and student success from what makes a great match to how mentors can not only offer advice, but can connect students to support services and programs and how technology can facilitate all this while gathering valuable data to make it all work and to make it work even better.
Elliot Felix: I think you'll really enjoy this. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Connected College Podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than a hundred colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and how they're organized to enable student success. And if you're a leader in higher ed, and you think that the silos and separations get in the way of student success, then this podcast and my book, The Connected College, are for you.
Elliot Felix: We're here to learn and work together to bust silos, question tradition, and forge partnerships so that students feel connected to their college, their community. Their coursework and their careers.
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Elliot Felix: Welcome Aaron. I'm so excited for our conversation about mentoring.
Erin Mayhood: Thank you so much for having me here today. I, I really appreciate it.
Elliot Felix: I think a great way to start is hearing how you did. So tell us how you got started in higher ed and what you're up to today. At Mentor Collective.
Erin Mayhood: Yeah. Thanks for the question because I think it's so meaningful to share all of our different stories and how we got to where we're gonna be. I'm gonna frame this a little bit before I get into some of those details.
Elliot Felix: I think we have some library, some stuff in common too, right? I,
Erin Mayhood: we have library things in common and people often don't draw this connection, but. There is a connection between how I got here, my library work and our mission to unlock human potential. And I love to draw that because, to be honest libraries, information sciences, but human potential is not unlocked by information alone or having access to opportunity alone. It's unlocked by somebody feeling seen and supported and believed in. I was a first gen student. I showed up on campus and it was like learning a whole new language. I didn't know what I was doing. I felt like everybody else was in a club and they knew what was going on, and I didn't know what was going on. And I look back and the people who helped me make sense of all of that, they changed everything for me.
Erin Mayhood: So that experience stuck with me. I carried it through my musical training. I did. I started in music. I did graduate work in information sciences, and then I worked in academic libraries. I worked at Boston university of Virginia, and I just, I loved helping students find their path and help them feel empowered to take it. So as the CEO of Mentor Collective, now I get to scale that same feeling and building a connection network, and it's been a fantastic journey so far.
Elliot Felix: I love it. And it, as it turns out, finding your people is how you find your path. They're right. They're related.
Erin Mayhood: find what you love.
Elliot Felix: Yeah. Yes. That's really great. Tell us a little bit about Mentor Collective.
Erin Mayhood: So at Mentor Collective, you can tell our mission is to empower every person to realize their full potential. And we do that through the power of mentorship and connection. We have built out mentorship and networking in data informed ways. We leave nothing to chance. We embed ourselves in organizations to connect students to. The best mentors that we can find for them based on over 80 data points that they provide to us in an intake survey. Then we encourage and nudge. Those connections. Everything from here's how to start the conversation to don't forget to connect because we all know we get busy.
Erin Mayhood: We love these reminders and we ask about key conversation topics, any flags, any area the mentor believes the student could benefit from help and we've created an environment. For student success professionals in higher education to be able to act upon that data. And why I get so excited about this is because mentorship alone will achieve tremendous outcomes, right? Students who have a mentor are more likely to graduate. Students who have a mentor, more likely to feel like they belong. When systemic issues that are, impacting the student's journey are also addressed alongside the mentor and the institution, those outcomes at least double. And so we've seen this in the data.
Erin Mayhood: It is. Truly a labor of love between, the students, their mentor, and all the fantastic people who are working at colleges and university around this country. And by working together, we can have incredible success.
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Elliot Felix: It makes. Perfect sense. In hindsight, like most good ideas do they seem obvious once you hear them, but so you're starting not so much with the content or the department or the area of study, but more what's gonna jumpstart that like personal connection because they have something in common.
Erin Mayhood: Yes, because when you start that student journey, it is really about belonging, belongings directly correlated to retention. And knowing exactly, example, first gen would be something that we would connect on knowing that somebody who's one year ahead of you. Has navigated this, made it through, had similar types of conversations with their family and friends. That's really important now, and I'll talk about this surely in depth at some point in this conversation, but mentorship is a life cycle, right? You don't just have one mentor in your life, but you're going to, start with that connection and then you're starting to get a better sense of what you're going to do, and you start getting connected with.
Erin Mayhood: Maybe alumni who are, near peers, right? Recently graduated alumni who have also navigated that. Maybe it's a community member, maybe it's an employer. You start learning how really to build, I always think your mini board of directors and all of the people that you're surrounding yourself with to help you navigate this incredible journey.
Elliot Felix: And you talk, you've talked about. Navigation and graduation and belonging to get there. Those to me are all swirling around or contributors to student success. I'd love to hear your what's your definition of student success?
Erin Mayhood: Oh yeah. Yes. And I know there a lot of people, of course, there's
Elliot Felix: only one right answer to this.
Elliot Felix: There's only one right answer,
Erin Mayhood: so you can grade me on my answer. No, but my answer's probably not going to surprise you based on what you know about already. First, I wanna acknowledge that every organization we work with has made massive investments to student support, advising platforms, early alerts, mental health tutoring services, all of these things. And all of these things are incredibly important. But still, student success tends to feel hit and miss from the student's perspective. Students don't always know what's out there. We see that a lot that's been well documented, or by the time the support shows up, it's too late. I always say the lagging indicator is too late, right? The attendance issue, the grade issue, it's already too late.
Erin Mayhood: Someone's really starting to feel bad, so to me. I define student success as supporting the whole person, and how do you help that person feel like they belong? How do you build their confidence? How do you help encourage clarity in what they want to do, and how do you help them make connections to help them keep going and, yes. Earning that degree matters. Like we all know this, over 70% of jobs still, like still projected to need the degree, the credential, but those durable skills that you get through relationships, through mentorship, like communication and adaptability, knowing how to navigate what's next, those things are not nice to haves. They're imperative for. Student success And I saw some data recently that of the 10 top skills in 2025 job descriptions right now, seven of them are durable skills. And so success isn't just about building up your hard skills. Yeah. It's those durable skills and it's about being ready for what's next.
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Elliot Felix: I really like that the holistic approach, like supporting the whole student belonging, confidence, a clear path, connections, durable skills. I think that's a real recipe for success. And I'm curious to know how does mentoring contribute to those, I'm sure in lots of ways, but
Erin Mayhood: yes, and you probably, this will probably make you think of. Moments in your life where you're like, oh yes, that's actually what was happening. Whether you called it mentorship or not, but mentorship is really the piece that stitches everything together, right? All of the resources, all of the curriculum all of these little moments of life. It's what stitches it altogether for us. And, it makes these support systems. Actually work. If you think of obstacles to leveraging a support system it might be raising your hand feels uncomfortable. Social anxiety, it might be. Awareness, like a lack of awareness of it. Like what is actually getting in the way of it? And mentorship can solve so many of those issues.
Erin Mayhood: So without this even the best design systems and platforms can fall absolutely flat if you don't. Think of the relationships and like that networking infrastructure that goes in there. And these were lessons taught to me in information science, right? If you do not pay attention to how the human is going to become aware of it or interact with it, you're really not going to get off the ground and mentorship fills that gap, right? It absolutely fills the gap. It connects students to multiple people. It connects them to the things going on their campus. Awareness, encouragement to attend, encouragement to participate. It opens up different career pathways, in those conversations with mentors ahead of you, what do you think my options are with this degree?
Erin Mayhood: Or how do I connect this coursework or this project with what I'm gonna be doing out on the world? And it connects all of those things. And then with a data informed approach where you're connected into an organization, it catches things before they turn into bigger problems. So if I asked everybody who's listening right now, how did you get to where you are today? I guarantee that most of you are going to talk about a person, probably multiple people who helped you get there and things that you felt comfortable sharing with that person that maybe you couldn't share with somebody else, or who shared a perspective that you hadn't thought of yourself.
Erin Mayhood: And that's really what mentorship is. So helps us be seen is that confidence, the durable skills. And it just makes sure that people aren't figuring it out alone.
Elliot Felix: I really like that. I like that approach. 'cause it really is like the through line between all those different things. And all these things come down to relationships and what I like about that is I feel like engaging, engaging other people in particular in person seems to be skills that are less learned and are atrophying among those who had them. Yes. Yeah. And having that trusted person who can guide you, who you can share things with, that maybe you can't say to other people who you have something in common with who can give you advice, who can be an example, maybe a role model I think is just so important because it comes down to relationships and often it's the relationship that makes some abstract concept concrete. Like in my book I talk about, your stats class. It's just the stats class. But then when you meet a market researcher, then the class actually comes alive because you can think about who you might become. And how you might apply it.
Erin Mayhood: Exactly.
Elliot Felix: Yeah.
Erin Mayhood: I like to lower the stakes for that a little bit, right? Like you're talking about something super intentional, right? Oh, I'm in this class and I want to figure out like how this is going to show up over here. And I don't think we should ever leave this to chance, right?
Elliot Felix: Yeah,
Erin Mayhood: you bake mentorship into the system that you are setting the expectation and literally teaching a student how to network at a time. Have screened addiction and social anxiety and all of the things at a time where they really do need this to be extraordinarily intentional. This is what you do. So then when the stakes get a bit higher, and now you're reaching out to somebody who's. Not at your school who can inform you on something that maybe like you don't know anybody who has done that thing, you know how to do it, right? Yeah. And that's part of school, right? We're building resilience. And what I love when you have data informed mentorship, like we even measure things like help seeking behavior.
Erin Mayhood: And guess what goes up when you're in a mentorship program, help seeking behavior because you're not afraid to walk into that tutoring center. It's about you finding the pathways to following your dreams and this helps build you up so you can do that. So for, I hear society talking a lot documenting a lot are concerned about resilience right now. And to me, I'm like then let's do something about it in a very intentional way.
Elliot Felix: Yeah. And the, the asking for help and the learning how to network I find really fascinating and you probably have this treasure trove of data where, you know, what are some like great questions for people to ask. Like I think about. When my daughter was six, she had these great playground icebreaker questions that I would hear come out all the time, which was like, how old are you and how many teeth have you lost?
Elliot Felix: And those were the openers. If you meet somebody on the slide, but in college it's a little bit more complicated. What are the best networking opener questions?
Erin Mayhood: I mean it, and it really varies on who you're networking with. And, but it always starts the way we started this conversation.
Elliot Felix: Finding something in common, tell me.
Erin Mayhood: Yeah, you find something in common or when you know what the person is doing, like how did you get here? Tell me a quick story. The thing is, when we're about to start a networking interaction, we feel like it's all about us, right? But what do people love to talk about themselves? Yeah, they love to talk about themselves. So you immediately find the question we, we like to talk about ourselves. We're more comfortable, we know our own story, and so ask about that. How did you get there? Where did you start out? What do you have, like what advice do you have for somebody like me? What was the thing that made the biggest difference to you in school? What do you wish you had done differently? It's all this type of stuff.
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Elliot Felix: Those are great. We've been talking about how important mentoring is as this through line and enabler of student success. And how there are things like the mental health crisis and screen addiction and atrophying skills, like what's changing about mentoring? Like what are the changes? What are the challenges facing? Colleges and universities who were trying to have this kind of systemic, intentional approach to mentoring?
Erin Mayhood: Yes. It's a great question because I don't think I have ever found a college or university that doesn't have mentoring happening. Everybody has mentoring happening. Some schools might have 30 mentorship programs running in different parts of their campus. And mentoring has always existed thousands of years and we're still mentoring. But mentoring is not about a single connection. It's not about a one-time match. It's about supporting people through their journey. And I think really what has changed is how intentional we have to be to help people start connecting. We can't leave it to chance, right? You can't have a, an online space where you hope somebody will look up somebody like them and then have the courage to ask them a question or ask them for support. It just doesn't work that way for most people.
Erin Mayhood: And so you have to create kind of a life cycle where you start with. A peer mentorship relationship to help get you oriented and building confidence and then ramp it up to discovery and skill building through different types of networks so that they can make sense about how their academics are feeding into their future. There's active career prep mentors who are gonna be great with those resume tips and interview advice and real world insight. And then let's not forget what happens when you're in your first job? Those first few years, we're seeing more and more employers coming to us. Can you support our students through internships? Can you support my early stage employees? And it's only going to get more for all of us higher ed included, because with the technology cycles and the change cycles only increasing. Career switchers, upskilling, going back and learning more.
Erin Mayhood: Like this cycle is just strengthening, which means, we have to find, we have to embed mentorship into these systems so that wraparound support is there for you the whole time. That's encouraging you to go back to learn more, to upskill. Take a moment, get yourself to this next step. It's a cycle that is started with that first year experience and really should never end. So it really does help break down silos. So you asked at the beginning of the question, what are the biggest problems the silos that all of us in every organization unintentionally creates, right? What is the silo that exists between student affairs and academic affairs or between those departments and career services or the faculty and the employers in your community who are hiring the students.
Erin Mayhood: Between the alumni office, if you look at all of that through the students' lens, they want to be connected to all of you and they wanna understand how it seamlessly works together. That's a tough job to do, but with mentorship, we don't need to staff up in these like wildly expensive ways to get our, those ratios to where we need. We need to be introducing the students to different people to help again, get your arms around everybody with different perspectives, and I think that is a huge issue right now. Just the different silos that exist and can we get to that lens?
Elliot Felix: Yeah. It's almost like somebody should write a playbook for breaking down those silos for student success. Very So colleges could be more connected. Yes, absolutely. See, yeah. I'm, yeah. Preaching here. I agree. And so it sounds like there's the change is that there's more change and in, with more change, people are more reliant and can benefit more on mentors and the thing that gets in the way, is when there are these silos, there are these separations, there are 30 different mentoring programs. So you're, instead of pulling your resources and getting an economy of scale, you have different niches that maybe are even organized by department. And you're saying department isn't necessarily the driver? At least initially. It often isn't, at least initially for belonging. It definitely is once you're like trying to connect what you've learned in that department externally. And I think this brings me to another big thing that has changed is that mentorship can and should be very data informed.
Erin Mayhood: It is a strategy for your organization. There was research years ago that really showed Boys and Girls Club that when the sponsoring organization supports the mentorship, the outcomes can be significantly higher. And this is proven to be true with all of our organizations. If you think about how much more likely you are to share an issue? Let's imagine we're experiencing food insecurity. Are you going to go in and tell your faculty member? Are you gonna go in and tell your advisor? You're probably going to tell your mentor, and your mentor is going to say, listen, there are so many things the school can do to help you with that. I'm gonna help you raise a hand and say it, and the mentor says it, and then the emergency services kick in.
Erin Mayhood: Students don't even realize that every school has emergency funds that there are pathways to getting out of different situations and mentors can help unlock that. And so the data informed, not snooping in on the individual conversation, but training the mentors. These are the boundaries of a mentorship. These are the types of things that need to be reported to the school so that we can leverage these amazing services. That's where outcomes continue to accelerate even faster. And that's when schools can really feel, better about, do we know what's going on with this, with the student population? Do we know that we're helping the students who are maybe less likely to raise their hand?
Elliot Felix: So for institutions that want to take this or need to take this approach, how do you knit mentoring into the like student success fabric and use these data to make these connections to , provide the help or make the referrals. What does that look like?
Erin Mayhood: Yeah, I, and thanks for asking that question, because I think in a mentorship conversation, we could spend hours talking about the right connection and the importance of a network and everything that it does. There are also really practical things to talk about too, to the school. What are the communication channels that you leverage between you, the mentors and the mentees? If it's just email, that's the wrong answer, right? Like you have to have multiple communications, including texting to make sure that you're encouraging and fostering good relationships. What are the workflows that you have in place? When a mentee or a mentor raises their hand that they need help, which offices are activated?
Erin Mayhood: How do they get that information? What dashboards and data are your student success teams using to see, understand the effectiveness of mentorship or this program or any program? What dashboards are they using? How are they acting upon the data? How are they encouraging participation? And then where should mentorship be embedded in your student experience because nothing is really a standalone, right? Should you be taking your mentorship intake survey at orientation when you're registering for classes? Can we normalize it? Hey, you're gonna get your person to help you like on this part portion of the journey embedded in what they're already doing.
Erin Mayhood: Don't make it separate. How is your provost or president acknowledging the leadership that your peer mentors on your campus are giving back, how are they acknowledging the alumni who are participating in this? And I think there are just so many things that it's not just about mentorship, but it's embedding in all the things that you know are important and valuable in your community. And it's uplifting the entire community. It's a combination. It's data, it's workflows, it's community building, it's acknowledgement, it's celebrating. These are the things that we need to bring to our campuses, to our students. And it really does bring a lot of joy. The schools that are doing it this way. We write about them, the culture of mentorship that exists on these schools. They're having amazing outcomes and they're having fun doing it.
Elliot Felix: Amazing outcomes and having fun doing it. Sounds like a great place to end, a great conversation about the power of mentoring to support the whole student and create the belonging, the confidence, the clarity of path, the connections the durable skills. And I really appreciate the approach you're taking and the work you all are doing to make that happen. Thank you.
Erin Mayhood: Thank you. Thanks so much and thank you for shining a light on it. We love your work as well, and it's just a delight to meet you.
Elliot Felix: Thanks so much, Erin.
Erin Mayhood: Thank you.
Elliot Felix: Thanks for listening to the connected college podcast. Subscribe to my Connected College Newsletter at ElliotFelix. com for insights and excerpts from my upcoming book, tools you can download, and special offers. You can also find more information about talks I've given, articles I've written, and upcoming events there, and please support the podcast by rating and reviewing it wherever you're listening. Let's create connected colleges where students will succeed.