Mentoring summer undergraduate researchers: the faculty members’ experience

Abstract

ABSTRACT Two faculty mentors maintained weekly journals of their experiences supervising three consecutive cohorts of summer undergraduate research interns, with the objective of recording the faculty mentors’ experiences and tracking potential transitions in their experiences across time. One common theme was the importance of creating a mentoring team of other faculty members, university administrators, and departmental staff to assist with the summer interns. One of the foundational experiences during the summer internship was the week-long field trip, which defined each person’s position within the research team. One of the largest challenges for the faculty mentors was balancing the needs of interns with different levels of motivation. Overall, as the faculty mentors gained experience and benefited from working as a team, they were able to increase their satisfaction with the success of the internships and maintain their own levels of academic productivity.