A Contemporary Perspective on Undergraduate Research Mentoring in University Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Programs

Abstract

The high‐impact practice of undergraduate research has expanded exponentially over the past 2 decades and has become a much more integrated pursuit across all levels of the educational landscape. Such a rapid expansion and diversity of approaches to these programs have resulted in the need to better understand and evaluate their efficacy in all disciplines. The fisheries profession has long been a leader in providing outstanding career preparation, which includes providing opportunities for students to engage in undergraduate research. To maintain this distinction, it is imperative that we as a field continuously evaluate how our current mentoring practices align with academic pedagogy recommended in the broader literature. Here, we review the extensive literature on undergraduate mentoring and construct a set of success criteria that represents a temporal sequence of best practices in undergraduate mentoring. We also present the results of a survey of fisheries faculty that was undertaken in order to understand what undergraduate mentoring practices are currently being used in our field. Collectively, this information can be used by individuals, departments, or institutions as a practical framework with which to evaluate and improve current mentoring programs or as a foundational starting point from which to design and implement new mentoring programs.