Advice For New Faculty: Structuring A Summer Reu Project And Mentoring The Participant To A Publication

Due to strategic funding initiatives by the National Science Foundation, Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs have become widely regarding as a beneficial experience for students considering graduate school. Institutions that successfully secure REU site grants have dedicated faculty interested in promoting undergraduate research. This is important because the time involved mentoring undergraduate REU participants for an intensive 10-12 weeks during the summer is significantly greater than the time spent mentoring an established graduate student. The rewards for the faculty mentor can include energizing an undergraduate participant so that they pursue a graduate degree under the mentor’s direction, advancing a research project, and publishing a paper with the undergraduate on the summer research project. For a new faculty member, these benefits are crucial for P&T documentation. This paper strives to provide guidance on how to structure a summer REU participant project so that the student has an extremely positive research experience, quality data is obtained, and the project reaches a completion point in 10 short weeks. For example, an ideal REU project would have a solid foundation from the mentor’s ongoing research efforts that is within the expertise of any graduate student mentors and for which a preliminary literature survey has been conducted. Per NSFs requirements, the project needs to contain an independent problem solving component and this necessitates that the student have clear, attainable objectives with immediate access to necessary research tools. The scope should be sufficiently narrow such that controls and dependencies are apparent and thus yield meaningful outcomes. Many factors influence progression of a short research project into a publication ready manuscript. However, a well-defined project and strategic mentoring of an inexperienced, yet dedicated undergraduate researcher can yield quality results and a working draft of a viable manuscript in 10 weeks. This paper will outline tips to accomplish this goal.