We are approaching the time of year many mentors begin thinking about onboarding new undergraduate (and graduate) student mentees in their research programs. This exciting time marks the beginning of what will hopefully become a meaningful and productive relationship (if not a mentoring relationship), but it can also present logistical challenges related to helping new mentees assimilate into an existing research program (e.g., dedicating additional time to training, etc.). In this post, I share a few strategies I use to streamline the process of onboarding new undergraduate research (UR) mentees. Throughout these examples, I make connections to high-quality UR mentoring practices using the “Ten Salient Practices Framework” (Shanahan et al. 2015). This framework emerged from an extensive literature review on mentoring UR from a multi-institutional research seminar from the Center for Engaged Learning on Excellence in Mentoring in UR.

Consider advertising your research opportunities or making a lab application form. Students access research opportunities through personal referrals, explicit invitations, searching through faculty profiles, and scouring for research opportunities on university sites (e.g., for an example, please see our Undergraduate Research Program’s Research Opportunities). These initial advertisements help students understand where research opportunities are present. Then, when our communications about UR are just beginning, I tend to direct interested students to my lab website, which has a page dedicated for Prospective Mentees. The page briefly explains my mentoring expectations, including the time commitment and general research tasks students complete. I also share testimonials from prior students and direct students to a formal lab application form. After prospective mentees submit lab applications, we schedule a brief meeting where I can learn more about them, share more information about my research program, approaches to mentoring, and answer their UR-related questions prior to them committing to UR.

Consider making a formal mentoring agreement. Nearly every mentor I have known has a slightly different approach to mentoring. This I think reflects the individualized nature of relationships, but it also can be confusing for students who hear different perspectives and are unclear on mentoring expectations. After I hold informational meetings with prospective mentees, I send along a few example publications related to my ongoing research and a sample formal mentoring agreement for them to review. The mentoring agreement provides background information about me, explains my approach to mentoring, expectations of student researchers, explanations of assignments they will complete, information about how often we will meet (one-on-one and in group settings), how their UR work will be assessed, and notes about how we will share our research findings when that time comes. Setting clear and well-scaffolded expectations is an important part of high-quality UR mentoring (Shanahan et al. 2015). Once mentees understand all these details regarding UR and want to begin, we proceed to building our new mentoring relationship.

Have more conversations. It’s important to get to know your mentee early in the relationship, including your mentee’s preconceptions, expectations, and goals for engaging in research with you. Here at Elon, I have used the Facilitating Integration and Reflection of the Elon Experiences (FIRE2) Toolkit which was designed to foster mentoring conversations and self-reflection around specific learning experiences at Elon, but it can be modified to fit different contexts and also helps mentors learn more their future mentees more broadly. These conversations have led me to recognize that most students know very little about UR beforehand but are very excited by the prospect of becoming researchers. These early conversations also present wonderful opportunities to help students understand the value of UR experience.

Help your mentee make personalized professional and personal goals for each term. Once you know your mentee a bit more, you can move on to setting goals together. A mentee’s professional goals will depend on their overarching goals, the project design and timeline, and the time of year (e.g., preparing conference submissions). Pre-planning to support project-related goals is an important component of high-quality mentoring (Shanahan et al. 2015). Mentee’s personal development goals are often related to what each student aims to achieve after graduation, including things like improving their elevator pitches or writing skills for graduate school applications. High-quality UR mentors make concerted efforts in supporting students’ professional goals (Shanahan et al. 2015).

Provide clear instructions for the use of research spaces. Many models of UR occur within specific contexts such as laboratory spaces, field sites, testing rooms, etc. Students may not be familiar with how to use physical spaces and equipment involved in those contexts appropriately. In my lab, I wrote a manual and guide to set clear and well-scaffolded expectations for teaching several technical skills and methods tied to conducting infant development research in our context (Shanahan et al. 2015). It begins by helping students understand where our lab is located and tasks they need to complete in order to conduct research with infants (e.g., CITI human subjects research ethics training, obtaining keys and building access, etc.). I go over basic procedures for lab operations (e.g., how to use the lab phone) and policies for keeping confidential data secure. I also dedicate special attention to training students how to maintain professionalism and how to actually recruit families from the community.

Use the Learning Management System (LMS) at your institution to organize your materials related to UR. I use technology to meet research objectives by populating my lab LMS site with a range of resources such as copies of mentoring contracts and research guides, shared folders on OneDrive for project materials, assignment instructions and templates, resources to strategically pre-plan, support goal setting, and completing semester projects (e.g., deadlines for conferences and/or grant applications), collections of relevant scholarly research articles, and resources for research skills training and professional development, including “how to” instructions to set clear and well-scaffolded expectations for using the library databases to locate research, writing and citing in APA style, and preparing abstracts, posters, literature reviews, curriculum vitaes, etc.

Throughout all these steps of onboarding, mentees (and perhaps also mentors) might feel overwhelmed with the amount information and effort it takes to begin new research projects with mentees. Taking a lesson from babies, it is important to take things a step at a time and focus on balancing the expectations of research with appropriate emotional support (Shanahan et al. 2015). Mentoring relationships built on foundations of mutual trust, engagement, and responsibility takes concerted efforts and time for both mentors and mentees (e.g., Thurman 2023). But taking the time to build a solid foundation early in our mentoring relationships has the potential to positively impact mentee outcomes during their time in our research labs and on into the next steps of their professional journeys. 

References

Shanahan, Jenny Olin, Elizabeth Ackley-Holbrook, Eric Hall, Kearsley Stewart, and Helen Walkington. 2015. “Ten Salient Practices of Undergraduate Research Mentors: A Review of the Literature.” Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning 23 (5): 359-76. https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2015.1126162.

Thurman, Sabrina. 2023. “Equalizing Status in Mentoring Relationships Fosters Collaboration.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog), Elon University. November 28, 2023. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/equalizing-status-in-mentoring-relationships-fosters-collaboration/.

About the Author

Sabrina Thurman is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Elon University and serves as a seminar leader for CEL’s 2023-2025 research seminar on Mentoring Meaningful Learning Experiences. She is an active mentor of undergraduate research in developmental psychology and co-designed a peer mentoring program to support first generation college students at Elon University. She has several publications and presentations on mentoring in higher education and has received awards for teaching excellence.

How to Cite This Post

Thurman, Sabrina. 2024. “Strategies for Onboarding New Undergraduate Research Student Mentees.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog), Elon University. September 12, 2024. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/strategies-for-onboarding-new-undergraduate-research-student-mentees/.