We understand that new students experience many transition stressors upon entering college. In recognizing that peer-related forms of support can often serve as a buffer against these stressors, Student Disability Services and the Office of Freshmen and Transfer Students have joined forces in order to facilitate a Peer Mentoring Support Program for students with AD/HD.

Peer mentoring is a helping relationship designed to support students with AD/HD by interrupting the cycle of underachievement and by modeling how to self-manage and self-motivate in order to meet the demands of college life. By using specifically trained and oriented Peer Advisors, the peer mentoring relationship will help to:

  • Ease the new student’s transition into a new environment
  • Provide support and structure within a traditional framework of peer advising/mentoring, but one which is also targeted to help students who experience performance problems caused by the AD/HD
  • Avoid any associated stigma associated with enhanced support


In this mentoring relationship, students will be exposed to multiple coping strategies for limitations often associated with AD/HD and will come to further understand how AD/HD impacts their lives in college. During regularly scheduled meetings, mentoring will focus on:

  • Defining and prioritizing realistic goals
  • Anticipating roadblocks to meeting those goals
  • Developing strategies to address what might ordinarily prevent students from fulfilling their potential for success
  • Creating systems to promote self-monitoring and achieving resultant expectations


In addition, Peer Mentors will also serve as the student’s personal campus information center, so that mentees can derive the greatest possible benefits from campus programs, facilities, and services with minimal stress.

If you are interested in participating in this program as a mentee, please contact Bonni Alpert, Director of Student Disability Services, at (413) 782-1257 or email balpert@wnec.edu.

Peer Mentoring Program for Students On the Autism Spectrum

Welcome to Western New England College!

Recognizing the many transition issues that new students experience and that social, peer-related forms of support can often serve as a buffer against the normal stressors of the transition into college, Student Disability Services and the Western New England College Psychology department have joined forces in order to facilitate a Peer Mentoring Support Program for students on the Autism Spectrum (nonverbal learning disabilities, Asperger’s Syndrome, Autism, etc). The program’s overall focus is:

  1. To ease the new student’s transition into a new environment
  2. To assist new students in becoming more independent, confident individuals and good self-advocates
  3. To facilitate the development of a social support system and communication skills and to decrease isolation/separation in a new environment
  4. To provide useful and immediate feedback, leading to improvements in personal and professional relationships


The premise of our Peer Mentoring Support Program is that academic success often rests upon the foundation of both positive self-concept and self-esteem. Therefore, personal/ psychological adjustment is emphasized in order to ease the student’s transition into the college environment. To serve this purpose, Peer Mentors will meet with their mentee at least once a week and will:

  1. Offer friendship and availability
  2. Praise effort and good performance
  3. Stand by their mentees in critical situations
  4. Assist with academic development
  5. Listen to personal problems impacting school
  6. Teach by good example
  7. Confront negative behaviors and attitudes
  8. Identify strengths to be maximized
  9. Share critical knowledge and personal experiences
  10. Serve as the student’s personal campus information center so that they can derive the greatest possible benefits from campus programs, facilities, and services with a minimum of stress

If you are interested in participating in this program as a mentee, please contact Bonni Alpert, Director of Student Disability Services, at (413) 782-1257 or email balpert@wnec.edu.