This book is a guide for mentors on how to recruit, mentor, and support students through a student research experience in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) fields. Being a successful research mentor benefits from the self-awareness and planning, strategies and skills that Success in Mentoring your Student Researchers can help you build and develop. These are useful for mentors working with any students, but especially those who have been minoritized in STEMM or are the first in their family to attend college.
The first part of the book introduces mentoring undergraduates and how it differs from traditional classroom instruction, active learning, and flipped classrooms; mentoring is collaboratively teaching research while doing research. A mentored undergraduate research experience also helps your mentees develop the skills necessary to be successful scientists and become part of STEMM communities. The central partof the book presents the undergraduate research experience as a “three-legged stool” whose legs―research, education, and community―each have unique values in advancing your mentees’ path in STEMM and all of which require setting, communicating, and realizing expectations for “success”--your mentees’ and your own. The last part of the book looks beyond the research experience, from evaluating your success as a mentor through helping your mentees to continue to develop and grow their STEMM careers and become mentors themselves.
This book is the mentor’s companion to the authors’ book for students, “Success in Navigating your Student Research Experience: Moving Forward in STEMM.”
Aaron M. Ellison (BA: Yale University, 1982; PhD, Brown University, 1986) has been a staff scientist and faculty member at liberal-arts colleges and R-1 universities, a curriculum developer, department chair, senior academic administrator, and creator and director of award-winning undergraduate research programs. In 1992, Aaron was in the first class of the US National Science Foundation’s Presidential Faculty Fellows, and was recognized for his “demonstrated excellence and continued promise both in scientific and engineering research and in teaching future generations of students to extend and apply human knowledge.” Throughout his career, he has kept to this promise, crafting and collaboratively implementing a vision for inclusive and far-reaching education in STEAM: science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics.
Manisha V. Patel (BS: Rutgers University, 2002; MS: University of Vermont, 2007) has been working in the academic and non-profit sector throughout her professional STEM career. She started out as a lab technician and quickly proved herself capable of managing projects and labs. Manisha has built a reputation for defining “the role of a newly founded position” and setting a standard of excellence. She brings her talents of organizational skills, collaborative techniques, communication, networking, and logistics coordination to support science globally. She has led and participated in initiatives seeking to enhance diversity and equity in STEM. Manisha is committed to building and supporting inclusive and diverse communities in science and education.
