What is it about?
Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars often play a key role in mentoring undergraduates in research, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. We designed and evaluated a year-long professional development program six interactive workshops for research mentors, who then mentored first-year undergraduates in independent summer research projects. Across three cohorts, we found that mentors reported increased self-efficacy in some mentoring objectives and skills, while many other areas showed little change.
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Why is it important?
Mentor training programs are frequently evaluated by broad satisfaction ratings, whereas mixed-methods approaches that combine qualitative evidence (e.g. mentor-written mentoring philosophies) with quantitative pre- and post-survey measures can reveal what is improving and where program design can be strengthened over iterations. Our study identifies specific areas where mentor development may need clearer scaffolding or different learning experiences, offering practical guidance for improving mentor training to better support undergraduate researchers.
Perspectives
Mentoring is one of the most important parts of an undergraduate research experience, yet mentors are often expected to just know how to do it well. This work reflects our commitment to treat mentoring as a learnable practice and to use evidence that shows not only whether mentors feel better prepared but also which skills need more intentional support.
Stanley Lo
University of California San Diego
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Design, implementation, and evaluation of a multi-disciplinary professional development program for research mentors, Mentoring & Tutoring Partnership in Learning, October 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/13611267.2018.1530101.
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