Undergraduate Research Posts

Three students and a woman stand together in a greenhouse. The students hold gardening tools, and they are listening to the woman. Text overlay reads "How might mentees benefit from an improved understanding of their own contributions to meaningful mentoring they receive?"
July 25, 2023

A Personal Reflection on What Makes Mentoring Great

by Sabrina Thurman

I grew up on a mountainside in rural Appalachia and spent nearly every day of my childhood playing outside. Being from a low-income family and surrounded by the natural world, I entertained myself by exploring plants, animals, soil, water, and…

A group of people stand in front of a house with a grass roof. One person is pointing to something ahead of the group but out of frame. An overlay reads, "Mentoring Undergraduate Research in Global Contexts."
December 8, 2022

Mentoring Undergraduate Research in Global Contexts

by Jessie L. Moore

60-Second SoTL – Episode 14 This week’s episode features an article from the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching and explores how faculty and staff support learning and development when they mentor undergraduate research in global contexts: Cruz, Laura, Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, Amy L….

A women works at a computer while three other people look over her shoulder. In the top left corner is a heart icon with an EKG symbol. In the bottom left corner are the words, "How does engaging in authentic, mentored undergraduate research contribute to student well-being?"
October 27, 2022

Undergraduate Research and Student Well-Being

by Jessie L. Moore

60-Second SoTL – Episode 9 This week’s episode features a recent open-access article from Studies in Higher Education and explores how engaging in authentic, mentored undergraduate research can contribute to student well-being: Walkington, Helen, and Belinda Ommering. 2022. “How Does…

Mentoring Relationships as Bridges
March 30, 2021

Mentoring for Learner Success: Bridging Known and New

by Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler

In order to enhance young children’s learning in the course of everyday interactions, parents often facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge by bridging, or establishing a connection between something familiar and something new (Vandermaas-Peeler, Westerberg, and Fleishman 2019). In a…

As universities were transitioning to distance learning, many of us had to consider how to continue to support our undergraduate research mentees.
July 17, 2020

Lessons Learned from Mentoring Undergraduate Research this Summer

by Eric E. Hall, Elizabeth Bailey, Simon Higgins, Takudzwa Madzima, Svetlana Nepocatych, Matthew W. Wittstein, and Caroline J. Ketcham

Salient Practices of Undergraduate Research Mentoring This past March, as universities were transitioning to distance learning, in addition to figuring out how to teach our classes remotely, many of us had to consider how to continue to support our undergraduate…

In a time when we are increasingly thinking about equity, [democratization goals] are even more important as we think not only about ways to increase the scale of undergraduate research through curriculum but also how to expand access to underrepresented populations and how to serve them best.
June 30, 2020

Democratizing Undergraduate Research Mentoring

by Eric E. Hall

The last few months have been incredibly trying as we try to navigate life with COVID-19 and more recently the resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter and advocating for antiracism after a series of senseless attacks and loss of lives for many Black…