Ten Salient Practices of Undergraduate Research Mentors: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

This paper identifies salient practices of faculty mentors of undergraduate research (UR) as indicated in the extensive literature of the past two decades on UR. The well-established benefits for students involved in UR are dependent, first and foremost, on high-quality mentoring. Mentorship is a defining feature of UR. As more and different types of colleges and universities strive to meet student demand for authentic scholarly experiences, it is imperative to identify what effective UR mentors do in order to ensure student engagement, quality enhancement, retention, and degree-completion. We offer an original analysis of the literature on UR mentoring in which we identify 10 significant "lessons learned," or evidence-based practices of effective UR mentors that apply broadly across disciplines, students, institutions, and mentoring approaches.

The role of academic developers in embedding high-impact undergraduate research and inquiry in mainstream higher education: twenty years’ reflection

“…A key role for academic developers supporting staff is to assist them in their roles as mentors, supervisors, facilitators, and co-researchers (Shanahan et al, 2015). These roles are discussed in depth in other articles in this Issue.…”

“…146-147), as a list of 20 questions for implementing a connected curriculum centred on research-based education; secondly, by CUR (2012), as a discussion of the characteristics of excellence in undergraduate research; and thirdly, by Shanahan et al (2015), as 10 salient practices of undergraduate research mentors.…”

“…(2001, p. 162) Much of the early development of undergraduate research, at least in the United States, was in the STEM disciplines. Over the past two decades there has been much scholarly discussion of the effective forms of student research and inquiry across a variety of disciplines (Jenkins et al, 2007;Healey & Jenkins, 2009;Shanahan et al, 2015). It is our experience that when inviting staff to consider how to integrate student research into their courses it is generally more effective to start by discussing the forms of research in their discipline and then move to exploring how the forms of undergraduate research and disciplinary case studies from other disciplines can be adapted to the teaching in the staff members dis ipli e and departmental context (Healey & Jenkins, 2003).…”

“…as a core feature of the undergraduate curriculum. In this period, undergraduate research has grown from its US origins, mainly in the laboratory sciences for selected students, to an international movement across a wide range of disciplines and institutions and reaching out to a wide range of students (Healey & Jenkins, 2009;Shanahan et al, 2015). Our perspective is as two geographers, who both moved into academic development in the latter part of their careers, who have had the privilege of visiting many institutions in different parts of the world to examine how they support undergraduate research and inquiry.…”

Undergraduate Research and Student-Staff Partnerships: Supporting the Development of Student Scholars at a Canadian Teaching and Learning Institute

“…For example, discussions of students as co-inquirers within the partnership literature (e.g., Werder and Otis 2010) have much in common with work addressing students as researchers (Levy 2011) or as producers (Neary 2014), insofar as all of these framings hinge on an understanding of students as active, scholarly contributors to research and education. Similarly, some work on undergraduate research (e.g., Shanahan et al 2015) takes up issues relevant to partnership without necessarily discussing partnership by name or endorsing that framing. Indeed, comparatively little scholarship has considered explicitly the connections between these bodies of work.…”