PROGRAM HIGHLIGHT
The Power of Peer Connections
By Julia Halprin Jackson
Fatima Hussain
When San José State students, faculty and staff stream into the north parking garage on 10th Street, they unknowingly drive above a veritable treasure trove on the ground floor of the Student Services Building. As they navigate five floors of parking, hundreds of Spartans are visiting Peer Connections, an umbrella program for a variety of free tutoring, mentoring and academic support services tucked away behind the Bursar’s Office.
Peer Connections offers employment opportunities for SJSU students interested in serving as tutors, mentors, supplemental instruction leaders and learning assistants.
“Besides serving our students, our peer educators get so much out of the experience,” says Deanna Peck, ’17 EdD, who has served as the senior director of educational programs and academic support since 2012. “They get leadership experience; they get involved in and engaged with college, and they give back to other people who are also growing. For many of our peer educators, this is their first job, and the skills they gain here are so transferable.”
“My Peer Connections training came in handy when I was pursuing my PhD because part of that program is also teaching students.”
— Fatima Hussain
Photo: Adriana Avila.
For Fatima Hussain, ’16 Chemistry, Peer Connections was the first place on campus where she felt a true sense of belonging and community. An international student from Dubai, Hussain first sought out Peer Connections as a tutee seeking help with coursework — and was astounded by the range of services offered to students free of charge. She took advantage of as many study skills and resource workshops as possible, then applied first to be a tutor, and later a mentor.
“Through the peer mentor program, you get to learn about a lot of the facilities and resources on campus, because it’s your job to guide people,” she recalls. “When I was a peer mentor, I was associated with certain classes and could mentor all the first-year students in that class. I got to do study skills workshops with fraternities, sororities and other groups. I got to learn so much from them, and our work led me to meeting lots of different kinds of people, which I really liked.”
After she graduated from San José State, Hussain earned a PhD in chemistry from UC Davis. Her experiences as a tutor and mentor, as well as the professional and pedagogical development provided through Peer Connections, set her up well for graduate school.
“They say the best way to learn is to teach, and that’s proof that you really understand something,” she says, adding that she served as a teaching assistant in order to get a stipend at Davis. “My Peer Connections training came in handy when I was pursuing my PhD because part of that program is also teaching students. If I hadn’t had those opportunities at San José State before coming to grad school, it would have been a more challenging transition.”
Hussain now works as a scientist for the Clorox company, where she combines her scientific expertise with her teaching training to assist in the development of new cleaning products.
Image generated by Trevor Phillips.
“For students coming from high school to college, there’s more of an authority gap. In college, we’re expected to work more closely with our professors, and as learning assistants we can bridge that gap by introducing students to their faculty members and helping them feel comfortable.”
— Dax Yuhasz
Connections are mutually beneficial
There are four different employment opportunities at Peer Connections: Students can work as tutors, mentors, learning assistants and supplemental instruction leaders. Peer Connections offers professional development for all new peer educators that focuses on metacognitive learning — the process by which learners can plan, understand and evaluate their own learning.
“A learning assistant is engaged in student learning,” says Dax Yuhasz, ’26 BS, ’27 MS, Biomedical Engineering (they/them), who has worked as a learning assistant since 2023. “In foundational classes like biophysics and math, students often struggle with coming from high school, which often teaches students to memorize ideas, into college, where you need to have a conceptual understanding before moving on to the next class.”
Beyond the data itself, Yuhasz says that much of the appeal of services like Peer Connections is the emphasis on working alongside and collaborating with fellow Spartans.
“A lot of what we emphasize in the learning assistant program is helping students overcome their fear of their professors,” Yuhasz says. “For students coming from high school to college, there’s more of an authority gap. In college, we’re expected to work more closely with our professors, and as learning assistants we can bridge that gap by introducing students to their faculty members and helping them feel comfortable.”
Peck has observed generations of peer tutors, mentors, learning assistants and supplemental instruction leaders apply the skills learned in Peer Connections to graduate school and careers in various fields.
The 2025 Peer Connections staff. Photo: Robert C. Bain.
Peer support as a form of belonging
Peer-to-peer learning has a positive impact on how people learn, says Peck. Faculty members across San José State are using LAs in their own courses and research into best education practices.
Because peer mentors, learning assistants and supplemental instruction leaders do not grade or assess the students they work with, the power dynamic innate to any other teacher-student interaction ceases to exist. This helps the peer educatoras much as the student, says Sahithya Swaminathan, ’25 Computer Engineering, who has served as both a learning assistant and a supplemental instruction leader.
“Joining Peer Connections was a game changer for me at SJSU,” she says. “I did not necessarily feel like I belonged until I got hired there. I found my community; we function like a family. We have training together, we have bonding events, we have staff meetings. I’m best friends with everybody I’ve worked with there, and that gave me the feeling like I belong. Peer Connections made me feel like I was contributing to this campus.”
Swaminathan has gone on to contribute to SJSU in many ways — as director of co-curricular affairs for Associated Students, she promotes engagement in registered student organizations, clubs and other extracurriculars, and as an undergraduate student researcher she assists the Physics Department in assessing how students learn.
“Our goal at Peer Connections is to build equity in the classroom so that people in large classes have an equal chance to succeed,” she says. “I’m such a strong believer that if you’re not doing well in a class, it may not be not that you don’t belong in that major; it’s that the way the class is structured is not supporting your learning style. Everyone has a better chance to succeed if they’re taught in a way that makes sense to them.”
“Peer Connections made me feel like I was contributing to this campus."
— Sahithya Swaminathan
Peer Connections staff at a recent training. Photo courtesy of Deanna Peck.
Sky's the limit
Deanna Peck’s Peer Connections office is wallpapered with student artwork and items from former mentors, tutors, supplemental instructional leaders and student assistants. Among them is a framed quote that reads “Connection is the energy created between people when they feel seen, heard and valued.”
“For many peer educators, this is their first real job,” Peck says. “The skills that they gain here are so transferable. Working with students, seeing them discover their own journeys — that’s what I love about my job.”
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