Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers Through Entrepreneurial Mindset

Undergraduate research experiences increase persistence rates in undergraduate STEM programs, particularly with women and underrepresented minorities. Furthermore, participation in these experiences facilitate STEM student development by providing an opportunity for them to apply skills learned in their courses while developing new skills that can be applied to further course work and their career. A productive mentor-mentee relationship is key to maximizing the benefits of these experiences. This must include not only the direct knowledge necessary to complete the tasks required in the lab, but also supplementary training so that undergraduates can understand the research process as a whole as well as professional development training to support student growth. Socioemotional support is also a component of many strong mentoring relationships. Faculty are rarely trained to interact with and mentor undergraduate students. To maximize the benefits of undergraduate research experiences for both students and faculty this research aims to better understand the characteristics and strategies of successful undergraduate research mentors. Research is inherently entrepreneurial; in engaging in research, we seek to discover, create connections, and create value through our discoveries. In understanding their research through an entrepreneurial lens, faculty may be better able to describe their research to non-expert audiences and therefore more easily engage with, educate, and motivate the undergraduate students they work with in their laboratories. The goal of this project is to develop a framework of competencies for mentoring engineering undergraduate researchers grounded in entrepreneurial mindset. The framework uses the KEEN EM Framework of Curiosity, Connections, and Creating Value as the foundation for understanding research and mentoring in undergraduate research experiences. The CIMER Entering Mentoring outcomes will be added to a literature review focusing on key competencies and best practices in research mentoring for engineering undergraduates to build the competencies for mentoring undergraduate researchers within the KEEN EM Framework. Connecting aspects of high-quality, evidence-based mentoring to the EM framework will support faculty engagement with these practices, allowing more undergraduate students the opportunity to engage in high-quality, high-impact research experiences. Based on this framework, a series of mentor training workshops will be designed to guide mentors in providing research mentoring designed to cultivate curiosity, connections, and creating value.