Am I a Boss or a Coach? Graduate Students Mentoring Undergraduates in Research

YOU’RE@CU is a mentoring program in which graduate students are paired with 1 or 2 year undergraduate engineering students to conduct research is now entering its third year of operation at The University of Colorado Boulder. The undergraduate mentees benefit from exposure to a research community and the process of doing cutting-edge engineering research, while the graduate student mentors benefit from the experience of being a mentor, defining a project and guiding a novice engineer through the ups and downs of doing research. During their participation in the mentoring program, undergraduates are assessed via preand postsurveys to gauge several dimensions of their engineering identity and confidence. Additionally, undergraduates respond to biweekly reflective questions to give researchers a qualitative flavor of their experiences in the mentoring program. Graduate mentors similarly respond to several reflective questions about their experiences during their participation in the program and complete preand postassessments. This paper presents the qualitative data collected from graduate student mentors during the first two years of program implementation. Graduate student responses have been examined in the context of each individual mentoring partnership to understand the impact of certain mentor training and individual mentor characteristics in establishing fruitful mentoring relationships. Initial findings indicate two salient mentoring models that describe how graduate students actively mentor undergraduate researchers: supervision vs. coaching. In the supervisory model, the graduate mentor sets up a hierarchical boss/subordinate relationship with their undergraduate mentee, while in the coaching model the graduate mentor and undergraduate mentee work together in collaborative partnership. Mentoring program directors and mentors at large can benefit from the experiences of these graduate mentors, as researchers look to develop better training materials and improve program structures to increase the likelihood of positive research experiences for future program participants. Introduction Engineering colleges and universities are embracing mentoring programs as one strategy to improve retention and persistence of their diverse undergraduate populations. A one-on-one mentoring relationship provides individualized support for mentees, and a sense that a real person actually cares about the mentee’s progress and development within their chosen engineering degree track. The connection between having a caring mentor and undergraduate persistence in engineering was initially described in Seymour and Hewitt’s 1997 study Talking About Leaving, as the ‘unsupportive culture’ of math, science, and engineering was one of the primary reasons undergraduates chose to leave majors in STEM fields. The premise that providing support through mentorship will help undergraduates is one of the primary factors motivating the creation of mentoring programs targeted at young undergraduate engineering students. A wide variety of mentoring programs exists in both academic and private institutions to serve the purpose of supporting students as they navigate the pathway of becoming an engineer. Some P ge 23146.2 programs are primarily social in that mentors are responsible for meeting over coffee or meals with their mentees to discuss how school and life in general are going. Other programs are focused around specific majors or coursework within a university, with several mentoring programs offering secure (online) spaces for students to ask questions, share and comment on anecdotes from their lives. A fraction of mentoring programs are intended only for women and underrepresented minorities, while various programs are open to participants of all demographics. Previous papers by the authors examine and summarize mentoring programs in engineering in greater depth than the cursory overview provided here. This paper explains how a research-based mentoring program for undergraduates at the University of Colorado Boulder has been administered over the last two years, and how experiences from the first two years influence the structure and mentor training for the third year of program implementation. Models of mentoring from the literature are introduced and compared to salient mentoring models that emerged based on data collected from the first two years of program implementation. These proposed mentoring models, termed by the research team as coaching and supervisory models, are explained in detail and illustrated using the words and experiences of past participating graduate mentors. Specifically, we examine the following research questions: 1) How were the supervisory and coaching models of mentoring enacted by mentor and mentee pairs in Spring 2012? 2) In what ways did the presence or absence of mentor training affect the model of mentoring employed in each mentoring pair? 3) In what ways did mentor and mentee gender affect the development and mode (supervisory vs. coaching) of the mentoring relationship? Implications of the two emerging models of research mentoring are discussed both in the local context of administering the mentoring program and in the broader context of mentoring programs overall and other types of research-focused mentoring relationships. Background YOU’RE@CU Program Details The YOU’RE@CU mentoring program has three main goals: (1) increase retention of undergraduate students in engineering with particular focus on women and underrepresented minorities, (2) expose students to engineering research careers in academia and industry, (3) encourage graduate students to develop mentoring skills through a hands-on mentoring experience. YOU’RE@CU, now entering its third year of operation at the University of Colorado Boulder, pairs graduate students with 1 or 2 year undergraduate engineering students to conduct research. The undergraduate mentees, or novices, benefit from exposure to a research community and the process of doing real cutting-edge engineering research, while the graduate student mentors benefit from the experience of being a mentor, defining a project and guiding a novice engineer through the ups and downs of doing research. Participating undergraduates enroll in a one-credit course which includes a weekly seminar on the fundamentals of research, like keeping a lab book and developing a hypothesis, as well as P ge 23146.3 presentations by multiple panels of graduate students and industry representatives to offer a extensive taste of the opportunities available to do engineering research following graduation. Undergraduates are expected to work in the research lab under the direction of their graduate mentor several hours a week, and must develop and present a poster explaining their research during a celebratory poster session at the close of the semester and culmination of the program. Graduate students do not receive formal course credit for participating in YOU’RE@CU, though they do benefit from the experience of mentoring a young undergraduate student in the research process. Mentors are given opportunities for training though sessions offered before the start of the spring semester and program kickoff, as well as “lunch-and-learn” type social gatherings with other mentors during the duration of the program. During the first year of the program’s implementation, graduate student mentors were solicited primarily by asking faculty members to nominate graduate students for the program, resulting in 9 graduate mentor participants. In the second year, graduate students were recruited directly via targeted emails from the program directors and graduate advisors, flyers posted in engineering buildings, and word of mouth from past mentors, program directors and administrators, resulting in 13 graduate mentor participants. As the program continues to grow and mature, both the recruitment and training aspects of the mentoring program will be adjusted and improved to enable scalable expansion. Initial Graduate Perceptions of Mentoring In 2011, during the first year of program implementation, the focus was on recruitment of undergraduate mentees and graduate mentors with little thought on the programmatic scaffolding required to enable a successful mentoring partnership over the course of one semester. No official mentoring training or guidelines were provided for the graduate student mentors, and no explicit program expectations or requirements were issued for the graduate students to base their mentoring activities on. As a result, the relationships were established based on the natural inclinations of the mentors and mentees, not on any official recommendations or suggestions. While the mentors were generally positive and optimistic program participants, differences in initial assumptions or assumed understanding of program expectations led to varied interpretations of their self-efficacy as mentors. Early on, several mentors explained their perspectives on the difficulties of being a mentor without a clearly established structure: “Since she [my mentee] can only work on my primary project, she’s just been reading papers that are way over her head and helping me order stuff. The phase my project has been in is not hands-on. This lack of flexibility has also made meeting with her a drain on my time...When structured well, undergraduate help can actually save grad students time.” – Lucy, 2 year doctoral candidate “We chat every day that she [my mentee] comes in to lab, she is picking up on things quickly and seems to understand the overall scope of her part of the project...She is a really nice girl and very enthusiastic but I don’t think the technical competence is there...To do something meaningful in our lab, more of a time investment is required on some weeks...I think 10 hours/week would be manageable if they budget their time correctly and see working in the lab as one P ge 23146.4 of their priorities or req