The Comprehensive Benefits of Peer Tutoring on Nursing Students

Theodoro Mercado, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in Nursing

In my nursing program at the College of Staten Island, I had the opportunity to learn an array of skills and interact with various individuals throughout my journey as a nursing student. I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with numerous teachers and peers alike who have served to guide and mentor me in growing as a student and future nurse.

My capstone explored the ramifications of mentorship on personal, academic, and professional growth. When completing this project, I was grateful to be able to work with my mentor Professor Danielle Hunton, who taught my Nursing 310 course titled, Interpersonal Dynamics for Professional Nursing.

Peer tutoring is a specific form of mentoring, and it is a form of communication that I employ either consciously or instinctively with patients and peers. The innate process of peer tutoring compels individuals to foster more effective forms of communication and reinforces their own knowledge of the respective subjects in question. It is inexplicably tied to the profession of nursing, and is a skill that is seemingly encouraged throughout the curriculum and serves to prepare students to perform well academically and to carry these skills into their eventual careers as nurses; it is for these reasons that I am ecstatic to be able to relay the implications of this skill amongst my peers.

The creation of this capstone project served as a reflection into the ways peer tutoring shaped my academic career in nursing, and while not all of its benefits were explicitly clear to me at the time, through the completion of this paper I can more succinctly identify how this form of communication shaped my experience as a fledgling nurse. Reviewing the literature for this capstone project granted me an opportunity to examine current nursing research on the employment of peer tutoring and the teach-back method in academic, clinical, and personal settings.

It was through this literature review that I am able to share my findings of these studies with my fellow students and future nurses, so that they may be able to appreciate the significance that mentoring and peer tutoring has on their future endeavors.

I am grateful to have been able to compile a formal literature review of this topic with the aid of Professor Hunton. Courses within the CSI nursing curriculum mention the role communication has within the profession, however, seldom do courses review the topic as extensively as Nursing 310. This course stressed the implications and benefits of mentoring and peer tutoring, and it is only following the completion of this capstone that I can adequately conceptualize the profound impacts that these skills have on students and nurses. This capstone project serves as a source of academic analysis and personal pride, as I was able to compile a comprehensive analysis of the benefits of a tool that was employed extensively throughout my tenure as a student.

Nurse’s Action Towards Stroke Awareness and Prevention: A Case Study

 Gabrielle Artz, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in Nursing 

These past four years in the nursing program taught me so much and has helped shape the person I am today. I feel like for most students who have to complete a thesis or a capstone project, they will say that it crept up on them very quickly. I am one of those students.

Throughout my time in the nursing program I was able to figure out what I was interested in perusing and what areas I was not too fond of. My main interest is in neurological critical care, and I focused on that area for my capstone project.

I was inspired by both the Medical Surgical Nursing III course and my experience as a volunteer on the Neurology Stroke unit at a local hospital on Staten Island. I have had the privilege to work with Professor Regina Lama for this project. She has an immense amount of knowledge to contribute, and she guided me through this project, as she was a neuro critical care nurse. She also taught the course that sparked my inspiration for this project.

While volunteering on the stroke unit I heard of many cases where patients suffered from ischemic stroke who could have received treatments but did not receive the medications because the patient did not seek treatment in enough time.

I struggled trying to organize all of the points that I wanted to touch upon in my project. Professor Lama guided me to speak to people working on the stroke unit to learn more about the protocols. I did just that, and spoke with a staff nurse and the nurse manager on the unit, where they provided me with teaching handouts and the protocols they follow when they are treating a patient in the hospital.

Further reflecting on this capstone project, I gained so much knowledge in wanting to spread more awareness of stroke in the community. I was so grateful to be able to work with Professor Lama, who also teaches the nursing course 411, Community Nursing. I am proud to have been able to create a case study and analysis to provide stroke awareness and work towards preventing this life threatening event. To say the least, it has been a journey and I do not take this experience for granted. 

Researching Political Influence and Fame

Mehdi Mesbahi, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in Accounting and minor in Legal Studies

I had a lot of fun writing out my capstone project and formulating everything together to connect it all. It had some low parts though. When I first began, my original plan was to mainly focus on politicians. I thought this would be more beneficial, as it would show how those who are supposed to oversee us are often the ones doing the most wrong but still manage to slip away. Eventually after some thought I decided to put politics on the backburner and try to research financial crimes. I thought this would have the best correlation because I am an accounting major, and I was fortunate enough to be exposed to some great people over the summer.

While interning at Stout, I met some great people working in the Disputes, Claims, and Investigations department. One person I spoke is a renowned financial crimes expert, specifically working with banks analyzing data and determining whether someone’s transactions are illicit enough to warrant an investigation. The other person I spoke with has an interesting career in the FBI where he investigates the finances of terrorist groups, trying to connect the dots to who funds these organizations.

I continued to speak with others who worked more on the legal side of things before I realized how difficult it would be to garner information about rich people who got away with financial crimes. I was put in touch with a few attorneys who all told me the same thing. The best person to talk to would be a district attorney who handled cases like this, but no district attorney would be caught on record saying that someone got off easy because of their status. After that, I moved onto the next idea which was fame and political influence.

While writing my essay an awful lot of research went into it and I was trying to make myself appear as little biased as possible, which was difficult to do as I had some personal opinions about what I was writing. Once I made it past that, the hardest part was figuring out the right way to present it all. Slowly but surely the pieces started to click, and I was left with what I think is a great informative poster. The skills with that will definitely carry over for the future.

Creating an AI Powered Color Matching Wardrobe

Steven Ceron, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in Engineering Science

As I reflect on my senior engineering design project, which centered on creating an innovative clothing matching and coordination solution, I am imbued with a sense of achievement and enriched learning. The goal of my project was to design an AI-powered Color Matching Wardrobe, addressing the common frustration of not knowing what to wear in the morning.

The culmination of my four years of undergraduate education enabled me to apply the technical knowledge I had acquired. This project, which integrated my understanding of electrical engineering and computer science, was rewarding as I saw the skills and knowledge I had gained materialize in a functioning prototype. In terms of electrical engineering, ensuring that the circuit operated without mishaps was crucial. Potential risks included short circuits or component damage, although these were unlikely due to the low voltage used. To prevent such issues, it was imperative to select the correct components, requiring calculations with specific formulas, and to adhere to strict engineering safety measures. On the computer science front, the ability to create and modify code to function precisely as desired was key. Employing machine learning was essential to my project since it formed the backbone of the design. The AI needed to accurately detect objects, which, in my case, were clothes and their colors. This was much easier said than done.

The most challenging aspect of this project was undoubtedly the software component, more so than the hardware. Throughout the project, I encountered numerous problems that halted my progress for days until I found a solution. Tasks I initially considered straightforward, like installing certain programs, turned out to be the most troublesome and time-consuming. Moreover, there were issues with the coding itself. Minor changes made to improve user-friendliness often caused the program to malfunction. For instance, increasing the resolution of the live feed resulted in label boxes misaligning with the objects.

This experience has taught me that, even as I near the end of my undergraduate education, there is still much for me to learn and improve upon. However, these struggles have been enlightening. I have learned various methods to solve these issues and the importance of broadening my thought process. Often, I was overly fixated on a single solution, overlooking simpler fixes that didn't initially occur to me. The project also taught me the value of patience; rushing through certain tasks, which needed slow and precise development, led to starting over from scratch after a rushed error, a completely demoralizing experience. Yet, this has made me more cautious and attentive to ensure proper execution, helping me avoid similar setbacks in the future.

I can confidently say that, despite its stressful nature, this project has been the most enjoyable and rewarding experience of my student life. I am grateful for all the support I received, especially from my mentor Professor Changmin Kim, whose pressure was instrumental in ensuring the project's timely completion.

When a Door Closes, There’s Still a Window

Alessia George, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in Psychology and minor in Business Marketing

Hello! My name is Alessia George and my capstone is titled “Hippocampal Development and Depression” and was developed under the supervision of Professor Rotondo.

Originally, I was in a research lab and I was going to use the work I’ve done there as my capstone. However, as time in the lab progressed, I began to realize where my interest in research was and that the lab was not a good fit for me and my ambitions. This realization was extremely upsetting at first. I did not view this as an incompatibility, but as an inadequacy on my end. Looking back, I understand that sometimes something isn’t for you and that it is okay to walk away and close that door of opportunity. When you’re surrounded by so many brilliant minds and interact with peers who seem so much more aware of what they’re doing, it is hard to realize that you’re still figuring things out. You have this expectation that you need to take this opportunity and stick to it, that it will make you better, yet sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s ok.

This isn’t to say that you should not do research within the labs on campus, I advise that you do, as soon as possible in your undergraduate career. Explore your options on research within the campus. There is so much knowledge and experience to gain from so many brilliant minds that will inspire you to be and do better.

Even so, when you do explore an option please remember that you can always try something else. For me, I did not enjoy the research that I was doing as much as I thought/hoped I would. Thus, when I left the lab I didn’t really have enough time to explore my other options, so I looked back on my undergraduate career and tried to remember what I did enjoy. This reflection reminded me of a previous topic that I really enjoyed learning about, which was the relationship between depression and the hippocampus, which opened a new window of opportunity.

My enjoyment and love for this topic inspired me to use it for my capstone, which I developed under the supervision of Professor Rotondo (I highly recommend him, an absolutely stellar teacher and mentor). I developed a meta-analysis of different peer-reviewed studies on this topic and cultivated cognitive and biological functions of the hippocampus, which is a brain structure responsible for memory and learning, and how they are affected by depression.

This topic is very multi-dimensional and has a lot of topics that relate and can be studied further which is exciting to even consider. It would be nice to further develop this research by looking at other details of this relation, such as a more neurological approach where there is an evaluation of cell production in memory and neurological pathways formed in the gray matter of the brain, or how antidepressant medication affects the hippocampus and how this relation can address other disorders/diseases that affect cognitive functioning, etc. There is so much to explore and it's extremely interesting.

This entire experience of doing research was refreshing since it was a very in-depth look at a topic I truly enjoyed. It was such a wonderful opportunity I am very fortunate to have experienced and stuck with and has made me a much better participant in academia. It has opened my eyes to how if a door of an opportunity closes you still have a window to go through.