Peer Mentoring Supports Persistence of Urban First-Year STEM Female Students Attending a Public Hispanic Serving Institution During COVID-19

Latina and Black female students are more likely than their White and Asian counterparts to leave science majors after their first-year of college. Supportive peer mentorship has been shown to positively impact science retention but limited data exists on the peer-mentoring impact to first-year Latinas and Black science students. We present an assessment of a peer mentoring intervention supporting the experience of first-year science female students at an urban public university during the COVID-19 pandemic.