High-quality research skills are an essential component in successfully navigating the graduate school process. The focus of this work is to describe a successful approach to teaching research skills to undergraduate students by combining laboratory experience with weekly instructional seminars in an attempt to foster future success in graduate school. This approach was designed and implemented for a ten-week summer research experience program for undergraduate students. The weekly instructional seminar series addressed research skills in three key areas: communication, investigation, and documentation. The seminar series began with the "Communications Seminars," where student participants learned how to concisely explain their research topics through an 'elevator talk' activity, a common exercise utilized in business fields. Followed by "Investigation Seminars," that addressed conducting literature reviews and creating annotated bibliographies. Instructions on formulating and maintaining a research notebook were given in the "Documentation Seminar" to close out the seminar series. Each seminar consisted of hands-on activities that demonstrated the application of the material covered during the workshop. Students were then encouraged to use the applications while conducting their own research throughout the summer. Details on the procedures used to implement each seminar are included in this work. A survey assessment of the research skills seminars was also conducted. The survey findings show the effectiveness of the research seminars in enhancing student participant's understanding and application of research skills. The 2007 program year survey results provide insight on the overall effectiveness of incorporating weekly research skills workshops into a summer undergraduate research experience and are presented in this study.
One of the most unsettling problems in higher education has been the dramatic underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians in the nation's engineering graduate schools -especially within the ranks of those who hold PhDs in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). These disparities among the number of whites and minorities who pursue graduate studies are apparent in the findings of Foertsch [1] The latter reported that about 30% of whites with a BS degree go on to graduate school, while only 19% of non-Asian minorities with a BS do the same. In 1995, blacks accounted for only 2.0% of all STEM PhDs, Hispanics for 2.5%, and American Indians for 0.3% -even though within the same year African Americans made up about 12% of the U.S. population, Hispanics 10.2%, and American Indians 0.7%.The Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering/Science (SURE) program is a tenweek summer research program, at the Georgia Institute of Technology, designed to attract qualified minority students to attend graduate school within the fields of engineering and science and combat the disparities amongst minorities regarding graduate education. We presume that a lack of knowledge, confidence, and support regarding the graduate school intake process are the major contributors to these disparities [2] . In an effort to address these major contributors, the SURE program provides a support system to its student participants via graduate student mentoring. About 90% of SURE participants have pursued graduate education, which may be attributed to the relationship formed through the mentorship program. Graduate student mentors supply knowledge regarding the graduate school intake process and help bolster SURE student participant confidence through one-on-one mentoring and group activities. An 11.5% quality rating increase occurred from 2005 to 2006 in the graduate mentoring program. Information about mentoring techniques and group activities used in the SURE program, during the summer of 2006, that account for this increase is presented.
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