Since the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty-student connectedness and emotional well-being have continued a downward trajectory, even as reliance on digital communication has grown. Generational and technological divides, particularly around comfort with artificial intelligence (AI) ,have widened the gap further, leaving many campuses without a structured way to rebuild engagement.
This session addresses that gap directly, by introducing a reverse mentoring model built specifically to respond to post-pandemic disconnection. For HBCUs and MSIs , where relatedness between faculty and students is closely tied to retention, belonging, and student success , a structured, low-cost model for rebuilding trust and communication carries particular value.
Presenters will share the design of an AI-supported reverse mentoring application-NCCU ENGAGE that pairs students and junior faculty as mentors with senior faculty and administrators as mentees. The session covers the structured mentor-matching approach, guided conversation prompts, and reflection tools used to support the pairing, along with preliminary pilot data on participant readiness, awareness, and emotional intelligence baselines. Presenters will also share what participants exchanged across the mentoring relationship , students contributing digital fluency and generational perspective, faculty contributing leadership frameworks and disciplinary expertise ,and how that exchange rebuilt a sense of connection eroded by pandemic-era isolation.
Participants will engage through guided reflection on their own campus's post-pandemic engagement challenges and small-group discussion of which elements of the model (structured matching, reflection journaling, communication norms) could transfer to their own context.

Attendees will leave with a replicable framework for launching a reverse mentoring pilot on their own campus, including practical guidance on structuring the mentor-mentee pairing, building in reflection and evaluation, and using the model to directly counter post-pandemic disengagement between faculty and students.