Mount Holyoke College
Mentoring often refers to transformative relationships and specialized programs on campus that support student success. While mentoring efforts at both the individual and program levels matter, it is also important to consider how we promote mentoring as a collective project within our campuses. In this session, Dr. Becky Wai-Ling Packard shares recent research focused on strengthening mentoring at the institutional level, followed by practical strategies for how we could take leadership in advancing mentoring all across campus. Together, we can ask: how sustainable are our existing mentoring practices for the mentors? Which threats to our campus mentoring systems exist—and how do we band together to protect our most important mentoring assets? Session participants will leave with relevant insights for continuing mentoring work across campus and the vital role we each play in that collaboration.
Becky Wai-Ling Packard is the Mary E. Woolley Professor of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College, where she has served in multiple leadership roles including the Founding Director of Teaching and Learning, Associate Dean of Faculty, and Director of the Weissman Center for Leadership. An educational psychologist by training, Packard’s expertise is at the intersection of mentoring and STEM student success. Specifically, she has studied community college transfer pathways, inclusive peer mentoring, and strategies to improve institutional collaboration with research grants from the National Science Foundation, Google, and Microsoft. Packard was recognized with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the federal government, and is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Packard, a first-generation college graduate, is the author of Successful STEM Mentoring Initiatives (Routledge), with a second edition forthcoming in late 2026.