This semester, we have found ourselves thinking about the importance of research spaces for undergraduate research mentoring and research productivity. Dr. Thurman recently returned from a post-promotion sabbatical and rebuilt the infrastructure for her lab. Her psychology research program centers on the study of infant motor development, which involves in-person data collection, and was severely impacted by the pandemic. For many students, the shift to remote learning during the pandemic also created a long-lasting sense of detachment from their learning experiences. Now that several years have passed, we—Dr. Thurman and student researchers of the Infant Development Lab—were able to complete a few online projects we had shifted to during the pandemic and recently resumed in-person data collection. We also recently moved the location of our research spaces. The transition back to in-person data collection, returning from sabbatical, and recently moving prompted us to write this post about the importance of research spaces for mentoring undergraduate research and overall research productivity.

Observations

Working in an environment that feels appropriately professional for the research can boost students’ and faculty member’s morale for the research project, the overall lab team, and the discipline. Research spaces and materials can influence psychological processes because they could act as a physical validation of a student or faculty investigator’s expertise, sense of confidence, and agency. For example, research on enclothed cognition shows that wearing a white lab coat increases the wearer’s performance on attention-related tasks compared to not wearing a lab coat, or wearing the same lab coat described as a painter’s coat  (Adam and Galinsky 2012). Thus, the symbolic meaning of clothes and lab spaces could affect investigators’ psychological experience and consequently their performance (Gifford 2014). In contrast, having limited resources to support research or inadequate spaces could lead students or faculty to experience imposter syndrome—the sense that they are not qualified enough to do the work—which may lead to a sense of not belonging in their field of research, and may result in a lack of recognition for their work.

The physical functionality of laboratory environments influence mentor and mentee’s research productivity. Our research with infant participants requires multiple types of spaces all in the same building, including those for parent parking, data collection, storage, and computer work. Having the opportunity to do research in these different laboratory contexts and being able to access these spaces easily increases students’ access to learning opportunities, and lowers the barriers for their participation in various lab projects and hands-on engaged learning experiences. For example, data collection spaces for motor development research involving infants and children is often spacious enough to support locomotor play (e.g., Cole, Robinson, and Adolph 2016; Horger and Berger, 2019; Thurman and Corbetta, 2017), data stimuli and custom apparatuses such as infant-sized stairs (e.g., Thurman and Corbetta 2017), slopes (e.g., Adolph, Joh, and Eppler 2013), and bridges (e.g., Berger and Adolph 2003).

When it comes to our actual workstations in our lab, we student mentees know we will always have exclusive access to our lab computers which are equipped with necessary research analysis and visualization software such as Sigma Plot (Grafiti, LLC) and SPSS (IBM). This can boost our confidence and productivity. Physical spaces should be equipped to support typical needs (e.g., free-range movement), contain enough space for storage and easy access to important materials, and serve multipurpose functions for informal and instant meetings (e.g., space to move chairs around for different screen-sharing, conversations, etc.). For example, we have locking metal cabinets directly above the computer workstations. This allows us to easily reach for data binders and other materials as we are working and supports a sense of independence and an ability to take ownership of our research, which is an important feature of high-quality mentoring of undergraduate research (Shanahan et al., 2015).

The comfortability of laboratory environments supports research. Any researcher who has worked with behavioral video data knows that data coding and processing can be a very time-consuming process, and this work must be completed in a confidential laboratory setting because it cannot be de-identified in the way survey or audio interview responses can. Thus, it is important to have a laboratory space comfortable enough to support labor-intensive and detailed work for 3 to 5 hours at a time. For example, in Elon’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program, students are expected to work 40 hours per week! Laboratory environments should have low ambient noise to support intense concentration (e.g., not having a research lab right beside a gymnasium), and comfortable working temperatures (e.g., Saleem et al. 2012; Tanabe, Haneda, and Nishihara 2015). Furniture should be flexible enough to support rearranging to accommodate different workspace needs, space for researchers to walk around and stretch their legs, and ideally would provide furnishings necessary to relax and recharge throughout their work, e.g., mini fridge to store food and drinks (Saleem et al. 2012). In addition, natural lighting from a window can also increase productivity, problem solving skills, and performance by improving mood and reducing eye strain (Shishegar and Boubekri 2016), and lack of natural light in a workspace is associated with higher stress hormone levels, poor quality of sleep, and depressive symptoms (Harb, Hidalgo, and Martauv 2015).

Research spaces should promote social connections and relationships. In our discipline, research is often collaborative. For example, data collection with infants sometimes requires three to four researchers at a time to interact with the child, keep track of the study protocol, and operate different equipment. In addition, we often work closely together in groups of three when having mentoring discussions about inter-rater reliability for behavioral video coding. It is important to have the flexibility to see each other’s computer screens during these conversations, but also the space to conduct coding independently when needed. Physical workspaces should be open enough to see others working, which can enhance motivation and productivity, and support opportunities for building mentoring relationships and informal connections (e.g., sharing a homemade snack together while working). Research spaces should also allow lab members the freedom and space to spend relaxed time or do homework for other classes in the research space. This means that research spaces should be nearby where lab members already are (e.g., near frequently visited classes, academic offices, etc.). Informal opportunities for lab members to connect in a research space can be extremely influential for building community among research teams, which is crucial for supporting effective mentoring of undergraduate research (Shanahan et al., 2015). The social interactions and meaningful relationships a laboratory space affords might lead lab members to feel a sense of place attachment, or a strong bond between individuals and important places in their institutions (Gifford 2014). Place attachment in laboratory research contexts might lead students to increasingly feel like an insider, build their identity as a researcher, and promote self-regulatory processes such as self-reflection, problem-solving, and stress relief, which can support goal-attainment (Gifford 2014; Kyle, Mowen, and Tarrant 2004).

Conclusion

Many institutional leaders make efforts to invest in and retain strong research investigators and mentors, and this includes making decisions about how research spaces are allocated (Iyengar et al. 2009). This is because it is important to increase the availability of material resources for laboratory spaces and equipment for setting up and maintaining specific research programs, especially for faculty in the sciences (Mullen et al. 2008). Scarcity of research space can be a barrier to mentoring relationships and research productivity (Conn et al. 2005; Mullen et al.  2008). In sum, a deeper dive into research spaces reveals the physical transactions we have with spaces and social interactions held within them have important consequences for mentoring relationships and productivity in undergraduate research settings. Research spaces matter.

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References

Adam, Hajo, and Adam D. Galinsky. 2012. “Enclothed Cognition.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (4): 918-925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.008.

Adolph, Karen E., Amy S. Joh, and Marion A. Eppler. 2010. “Infants’ perception of affordances of slopes under high-and low-friction conditions.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 36 (4): 797. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017450.

Berger, Sarah E., and Karen E. Adolph. 2003. “Infants use handrails as tools in a locomotor task.” Developmental Psychology 39 (3): 594. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.39.3.594.

Cole, Whitney G., Scott R. Robinson, and Karen E. Adolph. 2016. “Bouts of steps: The organization of infant exploration.” Developmental Psychobiology 58 (3): 341-354. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21374.

Conn, Vicki S., Rose T. Porter, Roxanne W. McDaniel, Marilyn J. Rantz, and Meridean L. Maas. 2005. “Building research productivity in an academic setting.” Nursing Outlook 53 (5): 224-231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2005.02.005.

Gifford, Robert. 2014. “Environmental psychology matters.” Annual Review of Psychology 65 (1): 541-579. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115048.

Harb, Francine, Maria Paz Hidalgo, and Betina Martau. 2015. “Lack of exposure to natural light in the workspace is associated with physiological, sleep and depressive symptoms.” Chronobiology International 32 (3): 368-375. https://doi.org/10.3109/07420528.2014.982757.

Horger, Melissa N., and Sarah E. Berger. 2019. “The role of walking experience on whole-body exploration and problem solving.” Cognitive Development 52: 100-825. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.100825.

Iyengar, Rama, Yanping Wang, Jennifer Chow, and Dennis S. Charney. 2009. “An integrated approach to evaluate faculty members’ research performance.” Academic Medicine 84 (11): 1610-1616. 10.1097/ACM.0b013e3181bb2364.

Kyle, Gerard T., Andrew J. Mowen, and Michael Tarrant. 2004. “Linking place preferences with place meaning: An examination of the relationship between place motivation and place attachment.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 24 (4): 439-454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2004.11.001.

Mullen, Carol A., Uday Murthy, and Greg Teague. 2008. “Listening to Those We Serve: Assessing the Research Needs of University Faculty.” Journal of Research Administration 39 (1): 10-31.

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): 359-376. https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2015.1126162.

Shishegar, Nastaran, and Mohamed Boubekri. 2016. “Natural light and productivity: Analyzing the impacts of daylighting on students’ and workers’ health and alertness.” International Journal of Advances in Chemical Engineering., & Biological Sciences, 3 (1): 72-77. http://dx.doi.org/10.15242/IJACEBS.AE0416104.

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Tanabe, Shin-ichi, Masaoki Haneda, and Naoe Nishihara. 2015. “Workplace productivity and individual thermal satisfaction.” Building and Environment 91: 42-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2015.02.032.

Thurman, Sabrina L., and Daniela Corbetta. 2017. “Spatial exploration and changes in infant–mother dyads around transitions in infant locomotion.” Developmental Psychology 53 (7): 1207. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000328.

About the Authors

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.

Kenan Carter ’25, Kyla Zeldin ’25, and Anna Grace Gilbert ’27 are psychology majors and undergraduate student research mentees who work with Dr. Sabrina Thurman in the Infant Development Lab, which is housed within the psychology department at Elon University.

How to Cite This Post

Thurman, Sabrina. 2024. “What’s in an Undergraduate Research Space.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog), Elon University. December 6. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/whats-in-an-undergraduate-research-space/.