Mentoring undergraduates

[kaister]

Here's a question for my fellow psych folk.  I'd love to hear from both undergraduates and graduates. 

 

How does mentoring work from your past experience? For example, getting authorship on a poster. Does your professor give you a topic they've been working on and you're just expected to make the poster? Do you have to do the analysis, write-up, etc? I'd like to hear how undergraduates are mentored or graduate students, how you are mentoring undergrads or how your PI deals with undergrads in this situation? 

 

I'm hearing a lot of differing perspectives, and maybe it's just personal preference, but I'd like to hear how others deal with this.  I guess in my past experiences, I've always had to do all the work, if I didn't take initiative I wouldn't get opportunities.  I'm starting to see at my current school (as a grad student) that PIs are more lenient and basically write-up things for undergrads to present, if they ask. I was kind of surprised, but maybe I'm just naive. So I'd love to hear what your thoughts/experiences are.  I'm trying to learn my new role as a mentor for undergrads, so any advice is welcome!

[SportPsych30]

@Kaister,
 

I can give you my experience as an undergrad related to this topic. For my first semester of undergrad-reserach, my PI took on two undergrad students to be his RA's on a project that he had already designed. We studied the affects of reminders on tolerance for violence. Basically each step of the way he would have us do what we thought was the correct next step, and he would lend some advice as we went. For example, with the poster he had me write up my own version of each section, then went through and made it sound much more academic and corrected any errors. He was simply an onlooker for both conferences that we have presented at, and surprisingly he listed me as the primary researcher (first author) on the poster and in the conference program booklets. He said that I deserved this recognition for my hard work.

My next semester, he sponsored and supervised an individual research project which was the perfect opportunity for me to sort of expand his work involving aggression into an area of my own interest– Sport Psychology. I am still working on this individual project, but he is no doubt there to help me with anything and everything. He likes me to try everything myself first, as to get the most experience for my graduate studies.  Truthfully, he is about as good of research supervisor as I could ever ask for.

[Lisa44201]

There are a lot of undergrads in my PI's lab (I'm at an R1, to boot), so I am fortunate to have lots of volunteers for research projects. Next semester, I will be training a few students on the basics of data collection; if there are one or two who are particularly interested in my line of research, I'll work with them on administering a specific assessment. I will also have them enter some data in Excel, while teaching them some fun Excel tricks (keyboard shortcuts, Macros, etc.). They'll get authorship credit on a poster (and hopefully a paper, if things go well) in return. After this project is over, I'll work with some other students on literature reviews, again in exchange for authorship on posters/papers.

[gellert]

I've been in a number of labs, both as an undergrad and as someone in a supervisory/mentor role.  All at R1 universities.

 

There were pretty contrasting experiences.

 

1) My lab as an undergraduate: we designed our own projects, wrote our own IRB submissions, trained our own RA's or ran participants ourselves, coded and analyzed our own data, interpreted it, and wrote our own papers for publication as well as writing our own posters.  My mentor's role was pretty much 0, since all of the honors students had been in lab for 3 years by this point and were expected to reach standards of excellence (which kind of sucked in a way, but I learned a lot!).  We chose for ourselves who deserved authorship by the usual ethical standards of contribution.   We also worked on each other's projects.  There were no projects that were not undergrad-led, so it was a very unique experience.

 

2) A lab in which I was a full-time RA: the grad students wrote people's posters and analyzed their data. The undergrads just ran participants and got automatic authorship on said posters (but not on any papers).

 

3) Lab in which I was a lab manager: the undergrads ran participants and did some data entry/coding but that is it.  All of us in mentorship/supervisory capacities are available to help with theoretical questions and so on, but the undergrads have not requested to do any posters (even though they are aware they COULD do them), therefore the question of authorship is moot.  We are encouraging honors students next year, if and ONLY if they can come up with an idea for their own project and then design it with the assistance of the PI.

 

Personally my opinion is you should only be "allowed" to do a first-author poster if you seek to do one (I don't adhere to the philosophy of handing people rewards without effort; people should seek out opportunities!), and then you must write the entire thing yourself, run participants (the majority of them), and at least assist on data analysis.  Other authorship positions should be determined by "could this thing have actually worked if not for X person's contributions?"  Authorship on papers = same as the usual ethical standards (i.e., must have contributed to design, analysis, revisions, writing; they must be intellectual contributors). 

[juilletmercredi]

I think this varies by professor, but in my experience (in grad school and in undergrad) I was expected to come up with a topic or question that would be interesting.  In both settings of course had access to my professor's data, but neither my undergrad advisor nor my grad advisor gave me a topic or idea - I had to come up with one that was related to the data that we had.  My first poster arose from a problem that I thought was really interesting in a set of data I was helping my advisor format; it only required basic analyses, so I did them myself.  And yes, I had to do the analysis and write-up, otherwise it's not your work.  It becomes more hands-off as time goes on.  In the beginning you get more help and supervision, and they usually expect more autonomy from you as time goes on.

 

When I wrote my senior thesis it was much more hands-off than the beginning. I obtained my own measures, designed my own recruitment strategy, wrote my own IRB submission, collected my own data, analyzed it myself, and then wrote it up.  My advisor was a wonderful guide and mentor, and she realized that part of learning is stumbling through it yourself.  I realized how valuable that is now that I am writing my dissertation; my advisors were mildly impressed that I taught myself a new data software package and analysis technique in two months.  But I needed it to do what I wanted to do!  I was terrified but because I had experience stumbling around in the dark before until I had an aha! moment and taught myself something, I knew that it would work out.  Students need that kind of experience.

 

When I mentor undergrads I use a similar approach.  I see myself as a facilitator or guide in their own journey.  They're welcome to come to me with questions about approach and method; I look over their writing, look over their analyses, look over their posters.  In some cases I sit down with them as they do the analyses and we talk about them together (this is very time-consuming!).  But I don't do it for them, because then they don't learn!  And experiencing a little anxiety/panic (when you know you have a safety net that will help you in emergencies, but not every little thing) is okay - it teaches you lessons.

[kaister]

Great to hear all these different experiences.  Seems like you all have had similar experiences to mine, and at least share the same philosophy as I do with mentorship. I get that it may vary by institution/professor. I feel a little better about having the perspective I have now (you must take initiative and contribute meaningfully).  I've always liked the role of facilitator, there to help and teach along the way, but not the leading force in the project. I also think that the best way to learn as an undergrad as well. Now that I know, it's not just my naive way of thinking, I can feel a little more confident in the way I'd like to mentor.