Retention and graduation continue to be topics of discussion for online doctoral programs within academia. Focusing on the post-coursework, dissertation proposal stage, this study examines whether students progress differently with two different mentoring approaches: the innovative structured-seminars versus the traditional unstructured mentoring. This study, using a quantitative approach and an extant data of 116 doctoral students, measures students' progression by the number of years enrolled in the program and number of credit hours earned while engaged with the two different mentorings. The results indicate that students engaged in the new structured-seminars on average spent significantly less time and needed significantly fewer credits than their peers in the unstructured mentoring. The innovative structured-seminar approach shows potential as an effective curriculum for online doctoral programs.