The Mentorship Maze: Navigating the Undergraduate-Researcher Quandary

ABSTRACT

Mentoring undergraduate student research is both challenging and rewarding for faculty members. With so many other obligations in research, teaching, and service, inexperienced faculty members may become quickly overwhelmed by volunteering time to mentor undergraduate research projects. Mentoring undergraduate research is often categorized as service; this may lead tenure-track assistant professors who are working to build a research portfolio to opt out of the mentorship process. However, in the face of challenges, many faculty members still take on undergraduate research projects due to their own intrinsic motivation to help students. Previous research has shown great value for both the faculty mentor and undergraduate student researcher; for instance, faculty mentors gain personal satisfaction and feel more relatable to students while student researchers improve social, research, and academic skills. The three authors of this paper have experienced the highs and lows of mentoring undergraduate research and provide recommendations to help the process run smoothly. Identifying and understanding potential problematic areas such as faculty-student expectation miscommunication, student trainings, and project design for the undergraduate level will help develop a more bulletproof plan of action. The recommendations discussed in this paper include proper planning of a research timeline, consideration of outside faculty and student commitments, effective communication, building confidence and independence in the student researcher in the midst of unrelenting supervision, and lastly but most importantly, practicing patience. The student researcher-faculty mentor relationship is important to the higher education system and with fine-tuning of the process, more faculty may be inclined to contribute.

KEYWORDS:

• Research
• mentoring
• undergraduates

Author information

Hannah Bennett is primarily a social science researcher, with a background in sport psychology and qualitative methods. She started her sixth year at the institution this past fall semester. Within her mentorship experience, she has worked with a variety of students. She has worked with seven undergraduate honors students on their theses and mentored six non-honors undergraduate students on three different research projects. Finally, she has been a consistent faculty mentor for the institution’s Center for Undergraduate Research programs, whose mission is to support the growth of undergraduate participation in research.

A. Maleah Holland-Winkler is primarily a quantitative researcher and her line of research revolves around the effects of nutritional therapies on cognitive function and physiological health in stressed populations. She has been a faculty member at the assistant professor level for five years and worked with multiple undergraduate students. She has advised eight honors theses and mentored many non-honors students on various undergraduate research projects through the institution’s Center for Undergraduate Research programs.

Nicole Peritore also conducts her work within social sciences. Her efforts are centered evaluation of health promotion programming, specifically working with community organizations who have not previously attempted evaluation of the work that they currently do. She has been a Health Specialist at the University of Kentucky and worked with undergraduate interns in the development of programmatic materials and currently is advising two honors students on their research projects.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.