Benefits of Mentoring an Undergraduate in Research or Creative Activity
Why might you want to involve undergraduates in your research work?
Here are some of the key points cited by experienced mentors:
- Undergraduate researchers are motivated students who are serious about pursuing graduate work and/or professional careers in your field.
- Working with them means engaging in a more personalized, in-depth teaching process, one that will give you a different perspective on how "learning" works.
- Undergraduates contribute new, unexpected viewpoints to analysis of research problems and processes.
- Undergraduates bring a different kind of energy into the research environment.
- You'll get valuable assistance with research background work and operational tasks such as database searching, data collection, data entry, or interview scheduling.
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Undergraduate researchers become more creative and critical thinkers as they work on research projects. They are students who want to apply the ideas they've learned in the classroom, and who want to be challenged.
You can be the personal inspiration and catalyst that they need and, at the same time, you can advance your own research agenda.
Cox Research Scholar Dominique McGee and Professor of Law Kevin Brown
A trip to Ghana with 17 other IU students was a life-changing experience for Dominique McGee, who afterwards changed her major to a double focus on international studies and French. McGee has assisted Professor Brown with a study comparing the situation of African Americans in the United States with the “untouchable” caste in India and collaborated on a paper about the issues facing affirmative action and university admissions with a growing presence of African immigrants and biracial students in the minority student population. Says Brown of his mentee, “Someone like her could become Secretary of State. It’s my job to make sure she gets the right experience and is connected with the right people as she progresses.”
Cox Research Scholar Rebecca Rice and Distinguished Professor of Biology Ellen Ketterson
To say that Rebecca Rice has been involved in research that is really just for the birds would seem to trivialize it. But it really is for the birds, and it is extremely important research. In Distinguished Professor Ellen Ketterson’s lab, Rice has studied immune function, disease resistance, and evolutionary dominance behavior in juncos. She’s netted birds on misty mornings and observed the patterns of dominance among two populations of juncos in the aviary of IU’s Kent Farm Bird Observatory. “Becky is quick, and she is fearless,” says Ketterson. “I expect she will graduate with honors. She will have published scientific papers as an undergraduate. What I expect from her is growth, competence, achievement, and recognition, and the ability to pass those all along.”
Cox Research Scholar Jacob Fisk and Professor of Theatre and Drama Fred Duer
Sophomore Jacob Fisk is building a brilliant future behind the scenes, brick by Styrofoam brick. Fisk helps make entire dramatic worlds come to life on the stage, working 8 to 10 hours a week in the scene shop of the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center. The Fishers, Indiana, native is a double major in Telecommunications and Theatre and Drama, learning about lighting, scenic design, technical direction, and production, in the dual realms of film and stage. For Duer, the experience has been a reaffirmation of his impulse to leave his job doing scenic design for film and television for academia. “For me, seeing someone’s face when they’ve learned . . . I love that coming back to me,” he says.