Collaborative Research: Advancing Mentorship Programs for Undergraduate Research in Engineering

This project aims to serve the national interest by establishing practices to improve mentorship, learning, and engagement in undergraduate research experiences (UREs) in engineering. UREs play a crucial role in enhancing engineering students' academic experiences by providing hands-on, authentic experiential learning opportunities. This level 2 project in the Engaged Student Learning track of the IUSE program will build on an existing toolkit of interventions and best practices that create structured reflection and mentoring activities within engineering UREs. The implementation, adaptation, and outcomes of this toolkit in UREs will be studied across five institutions. This work has the potential to expand access and improve the quality of mentorship in engineering UREs. It will also strengthen the existing partnership between a diverse group of participating institutions, and the knowledge gained will result in the expansion of high-quality, freely available resources for engineering UREs. During the project, the investigators will form an Undergraduate Research Excellence Network (UREN) with URE mentors, including faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students, to implement the existing toolkit. The toolkit includes student and mentor training videos, activities, instructor guides, and workshops that make the learning and benefits of UREs more visible to and accessible for students and faculty. The UREN will provide structured training and coaching to help mentors form an action plan for adopting these tools in their research mentorship. The implementations will be evaluated through an emergent design studies approach, focusing on mediating processes involving student self-assessment, reflective thinking, and mindset. These findings will be linked with evaluated outcomes related to students' autonomy and self-confidence in research and their ability to connect their research experience with their learning through coursework. This project will increase knowledge about improving learning and engagement in engineering UREs. Evaluating whether the learning gains observed in previous work can be generalized across five institutions will establish this toolkit as an important contribution to enhancing engineering students' learning. Furthermore, it will provide critical insight to inform the development of new pedagogical approaches that leverage student mindset to support experiential learning in STEM fields. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.