MANKATO — The first anatomy exam of the semester was just days away when students gathered in the library at Minnesota State University, Mankato for a study session filled with games.
Want to mark your spot on a tic-tac-toe board? You need to name three types of protein in the cytoskeleton. Want to win at trivia? You need to know the cranial cavity houses the brain.
Overseeing the exam prep was Amal Sharafkhodjaeva, a junior who remembers vividly how hard it was to pass one of the university’s toughest courses. Now she’s working as a MavPASS leader, one of dozens of student employees running study sessions aimed at helping scholars thrive in the most difficult subjects and helping the university chip away at racial disparities.
“I think I passed the course just because of MavPASS,” said Sharafkhodjaeva, who took the class last year. “The content is really hard to understand.”
Minnesota frequently ranks among the states with the highest college completion rates, but glaring racial disparities persist. While roughly 60% of Asian and white adults in the state obtain a college degree, it’s closer to 30% of Black and Hispanic adults, according to data from the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.
College leaders face increased pressure to reduce disparities in higher education in part because their pool of prospective applicants is becoming more diverse. By 2036, about 40% of Minnesota public high school graduates will be people of color, according to projections by the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, a nonprofit that works with colleges and universities.
So four years ago, Minnesota State Mankato began experimenting with a new program called MavPASS, short for Maverick Peer-facilitated Academic Support System. The university hires students who have passed some of the university’s most difficult classes — chemistry, calculus and anthropology, among others — and asks them to run study sessions for students taking the courses now. Sometimes, they help students prepare for upcoming tests. Sometimes they review difficult new topics that were covered in a lecture or a lab.
“I loved the fact that it was peer facilitated,” said Laura Jacobi, a communication professor and faculty liaison for the MavPASS program, noting students are sometimes intimidated by professors and feel more comfortable with peers. “Oftentimes, students don’t want to show when they don’t know something.”