Mentoring Undergraduate Research Research Articles

Mentoring Undergraduate Research with Institutional Datasets: Growth Mindset for Pure Mathematicians

Mentoring Undergraduate Research with Institutional Datasets: Growth Mindset for Pure Mathematicians

2025 EAAI Mentored Undergraduate Research Challenge: Playing Word Association Games

The topic for EAAI 2025's Mentored Undergraduate Research Challenge is PlayingWord Association Games. What does that mean? Where are the applications? How can you get started? We break down the topic, discuss applications, and explore project ideas in this column.

Welcome to AI Matters 10(1)

Welcome to the first issue of the AI Matters Newsletter in 2024! This issue will start with a conference report by Dr. Louise A. Dennis. This report particularly summarizes the awarded papers and keynote speeches at HRI 2023, AAMAS 2023, ICAIL 2023, and more! Dr. Richard G. Freedman from Smart Information FlowTechnologies (SIFT) will then present us an exciting, upcoming challenge - the 2025 EAAI Mentored Undergraduate Research Challenge: Playing Word Association Games. Finally, this issue will end with a book review written by Dr. David S. Rogers at the American Military University. In this review article, Dr. Rogers introduced us a new book, titled "Understanding Large Language Models: Learning Their Underlying Concepts and Technologies", recently written by Thimira Amaratunga and published by Apress.

Mentoring Undergraduate Research and Centering Collaboration

Abstract In this article, faculty members from three United States colleges and universities reflect upon mentoring undergraduate research in cultural anthropology and consider the educational and practice-based outcomes of student mentorship. Following a multi-year experience jointly mentoring students, we discuss our trajectories, lessons, and challenges in learning to support and advise undergraduate researchers. We reflect upon the impact of the “lone ethnographer” mentality as well as the possibilities of collaborative research, seeing the university as a site for ethnographic research and developing experiential programs. Collectively, we highlight the need to expand not only options for students to engage in primary research design, data collection, and analysis but also for anthropology departments and institutions to support instructors who prioritize student research opportunities and to provide training so that more instructors may do so confidently.

Mentored Undergraduate Research at Community Colleges

This study investigates the impact of community college students’ participation in mentored undergraduate research, with an emphasis on STEM transfer students. The STEM Academic Research and Training (START) program at Wake Technical Community College was designed and implemented by community college faculty and staff and was evaluated in a randomized control trial. Early evidence showed statistically significant positive effects on students’ attitudes toward STEM.

The Role of Question-Asking in Mentoring Undergraduate Research

The Role of Question-Asking in Mentoring Undergraduate Research

Increasing Undergraduate Retention in Appalachia through a Mentored Undergraduate Research Experience

This article describes the Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP), a mentored undergraduate research experience implemented in 2017 at a public land-grant institution located in the Appalachian region. The article focuses on RAP’s approach to recruiting, retaining, and supporting students in faculty-mentored research and creative inquiry. To assess the impact of RAP on undergraduate retention, institutional data were collected to identify RAP participants from the years 2017 to 2022 (n = 868) to compare next-year retention rates with institutional averages across similar demographic groups. The results showed that retention rates for RAP participants were significantly higher than institutional averages, and disaggregated data also showed higher retention rates for participants from historically marginalized populations. These This article describes the Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP), a mentored undergraduate research experience implemented in 2017 at a public land-grant institution located in the Appalachian region. The article focuses on RAP’s approach to recruiting, retaining, and supporting students in faculty-mentored research and creative inquiry. To assess the impact of RAP on undergraduate retention, institutional data were collected to identify RAP participants from the years 2017 to 2022 (n = 868) to compare next-year retention rates with institutional averages across similar demographic groups. The results showed that retention rates for RAP participants were significantly higher than institutional averages, and disaggregated data also showed higher retention rates for participants from historically marginalized populations. These results provide evidence of the program’s contribution to the educational development of the Appalachian region.

Mentoring Undergraduate Research in Mathematical Modeling.

In writing about undergraduate research in mathematical modeling, I draw on my 31 years as a mathematics professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where I mentored students in honors’ theses, REU groups, and research done in a classroom setting, as well as my prior experience. I share my views on the differences between research at the undergraduate and professional levels, offer advice for undergraduate mentoring, provide suggestions for a variety of ways that students can disseminate their research, offer some thoughts on mathematical modeling and how to explain it to undergraduates, and discuss the challenges involved in broadening research participation to include early career students and mid-tier students and how to deliver a research experience in a classroom setting. While different situations pose different challenges, different problems require different approaches, and different experiences lead to different conclusions, it is my hope that my experiences will be of broad value to a wide audience.

Mentoring Undergraduate Research in Different College/University Settings

One innovative strategy that can improve higher education is undergraduate students’ engagement in research. Mentoring is one of the few opportunities that afford extended face-to-face and one-on-one instruction. However, mentoring undergraduate students in doing research is not the same at different types of colleges and universities. This paper gives insights from my perspective on how undergraduate students are being mentored in doing research in different university/college settings, namely a premier university (University of the Philippines Los Baños), a public research university (University at Buffalo), a public senior college (York College) and a private university (Pace University). The main goal of this paper is to compare the undergraduate research structure at the four institutions. I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each setting, emphasizing how I engaged my students to do research with emphasis at Pace University. This paper also includes the similarities and differences in how students achieved the following learning outcomes: knowledge, skills, attitudinal outcomes, and learned abilities.

A Mathematician's Practical Guide to Mentoring Undergraduate Research

A Mathematician's Practical Guide to Mentoring Undergraduate Research

2023 EAAI mentored undergraduate research challenge

The topic for EAAI 2023's Mentored Undergraduate Research Challenge is Human-Aware AI in Sound and Music. What does that mean? Where are the applications? How can you get started? We break down the topic, discuss applications, and explore project ideas in this column.

Welcome to AI matters 7(3)

Welcome to the third issue of this year's AI Matters Newsletter. We open with the annual report of SIGAI by our leadership team. We then bring you a brief report on upcoming SIGAI Events by Dilini Samarasinghe and Conference reports by Louise Dennis. In our regular Education column, Lisa Zhang, Pouria Fewzee, and Charbel Feghali describe a Model AI Assignment where students combine various techniques from a deep learning course to build a denoising autoencoder for news headlines. We end the issue with two article contributions, one by Richard Freedman that describes the 2023 EAAI Mentored Undergraduate Research Challenge, and another by Ulle Endriss, Ann Nowé, Maria Gini, Victor Lesser, Michael Luck, Ana Paiva, and Jaime Sichman, which provides perspectives on the completion of 20 years of AAMAS.

“I Think I’m the Bridge”: Exploring Mentored Undergraduate Research Experiences in Critical Multicultural Education

Although mentored undergraduate research has been shown to deepen student engagement across various disciplines, this type of extended learning opportunity is not a prominent feature of research and practice in teacher education. Our article addresses this gap by analyzing the experiences and growth of a group of five preservice teachers engaged in a mentored undergraduate research experience in several sections of an introductory critical multicultural education course. Specifically, we examined how pre-service teachers’ personal, academic, and professional engagement with critical multicultural education is impacted when they are positioned as researchers and receive additional training outside the traditional class format. Our findings indicate that their involvement as student co-researchers fostered a new awareness, sensitivity, and emotional investment in issues of social justice beyond what they gained in their introductory multicultural education course. Pre-service teachers described navigating personal relationships with new awareness and sensitivity and adjusting future plans in accordance with their deeper understanding and commitment to educational equity. We argue that mentored research opportunities are an innovative way to address professor/student power differentials in teacher education research and offer a unique model of critical multicultural teacher education that promotes deep engagement with issues beyond the classroom setting.

Enhanced Mentored Undergraduate Research Experiences: Successful Strategies Used in Two Laboratories at Auburn University

Purpose There is a growing trend toward the provision of undergraduate research experiences as a high impact educational practice that promotes the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills. This tutorial aims to provide mentoring pathways and resources to faculty mentors who may be unaware of the benefits of undergraduate student participation in research or faculty researchers who are interested in developing meaningful mentored undergraduate research experiences (MUREs). Faculty and student perspectives shared from two research labs at Auburn University illustrate an applied framework for implementation of MUREs. The observed benefits and potential barriers related to the development of MUREs in these laboratories as well as specific recommendations for a structured mentoring approach to optimize student training and research deliverables are described. Conclusions Key elements for developing successful MUREs include relationship building between the mentor and the student, identifying the benefits for both the students and mentor, and persevering beyond barriers to implementation. The utilization of practical guides, theoretical approaches, and collaborative efforts yielded benefits for both students and mentoring faculty in two research labs at Auburn University. Practical guides for obtaining funding for MUREs and accompanying supplemental materials (a lab manual template and manuscript-writing guide) that have supported success in our labs are provided. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14044067

The Mentorship Maze: Navigating the Undergraduate-Researcher Quandary

ABSTRACT Mentoring undergraduate student research is both challenging and rewarding for faculty members. With so many other obligations in research, teaching, and service, inexperienced faculty members may become quickly overwhelmed by volunteering time to mentor undergraduate research projects. Mentoring undergraduate research is often categorized as service; this may lead tenure-track assistant professors who are working to build a research portfolio to opt out of the mentorship process. However, in the face of challenges, many faculty members still take on undergraduate research projects due to their own intrinsic motivation to help students. Previous research has shown great value for both the faculty mentor and undergraduate student researcher; for instance, faculty mentors gain personal satisfaction and feel more relatable to students while student researchers improve social, research, and academic skills. The three authors of this paper have experienced the highs and lows of mentoring undergraduate research and provide recommendations to help the process run smoothly. Identifying and understanding potential problematic areas such as faculty-student expectation miscommunication, student trainings, and project design for the undergraduate level will help develop a more bulletproof plan of action. The recommendations discussed in this paper include proper planning of a research timeline, consideration of outside faculty and student commitments, effective communication, building confidence and independence in the student researcher in the midst of unrelenting supervision, and lastly but most importantly, practicing patience. The student researcher-faculty mentor relationship is important to the higher education system and with fine-tuning of the process, more faculty may be inclined to contribute.

Creative Assignments in Upper Level Undergraduate Courses Inspired by Mentoring Undergraduate Research Projects

Creative Assignments in Upper Level Undergraduate Courses Inspired by Mentoring Undergraduate Research Projects

Mentoring Undergraduate Research in Statistics: Reaping the Benefits and Overcoming the Barriers

Undergraduate research experiences (UREs), whether within the context of a mentor-mentee experience or a classroom framework, represent an excellent opportunity to expose students to the independent scholarship model. The high impact of undergraduate research has received recent attention in the context of STEM disciplines. Reflecting a 2017 survey of statistics faculty, this article examines the perceived benefits of UREs, as well as barriers to the incorporation of UREs, specifically within the field of statistics. Viewpoints of students, faculty mentors, and institutions are investigated. Further, the article offers several strategies for leveraging characteristics unique to the field of statistics to overcome barriers and thereby provide greater opportunity for undergraduate statistics students to gain research experience.

4. Mentoring Undergraduate Research: Advanced Planning Tools and Tips by Courtney R. Gibbons

4. Mentoring Undergraduate Research: Advanced Planning Tools and Tips by Courtney R. Gibbons

Enzymatic Oxidation of Biological Thiols by MitoNEET

MitoNEET is a mitochondrial [2Fe‐2S] protein known for its involvement in mitochondrial bioenergetics, iron metabolism, and oxidative stress. The protein has been extensively characterized at the biochemical level since its discovery in 2004, but the mechanisms of physiological function(s) remain unresolved. Two observations seem especially relevant for understanding the physiological function of mitoNEET: (1) under anaerobic conditions in vitro thiol compounds such as glutathione (GSH) and cysteine (Cys) reduce the 2Fe‐2S cluster from the Fe+3Fe+3 to the Fe3+Fe2+ state, and (2) mitoNEET expression levels increase in cells when the glutathione redox balance is shifted towards the oxidized state. We hypothesize that mitoNEET’s in vivo function can be elucidated by bridging these two observations and postulate that mitoNEET is an enzyme responsible for the oxidation of thiol groups on either low molecular‐weight compounds or cysteine residues on target proteins involved in redox signaling. To test this hypothesis, we monitored thiol oxidation by following oxygen consumption rates and demonstrate that mitoNEET accelerates thiol oxidation of cysteine and glutathione (GSH). Four distinct experiments comparing the reactivity of Fe3+ in the form of FeCl3 to mitoNEET demonstrate that the observed thiol oxidation by mitoNEET was not due to free Fe3+contamination. These observations were: (1) rates of cysteine oxidation (8 mM) catalyzed by mitoNEET (1.5 mM) or Fe3+ (1.5 mM) show different optima in the pH range 6.4 to 9.4 and the mitoNEET‐catalyzed reaction is 137% faster at pH 8.4 than the rate observed for Fe3+ alone. (2) Oxidation rates of the nonphysiological compound, n‐acetylcysteine (NAC) by mitoNEET are 181% higher compared to Fe3+ at a pH of 9.0. (3) MitoNEET‐mediated glutathione oxidation remained unaffected by addition of cysteine while oxidation catalyzed by free Fe3+ decreased after addition of cysteine. (4) Dimedone, a probe used to inhibit thiol oxidation from sulfenic acid to sulfinic and sulfonic acid, was 25% more effective at inhibiting cysteine oxidation when free Fe3+ was the catalyst compared to mitoNEET. These results support our hypothesis that mitoNEET possesses an active site which functions to oxidize biological thiols. While the in vivo substrate is currently unknown, we have narrowed down potential candidates to small thiol containing compounds and/or cysteine residues on specific target proteins. We are currently investigating how the enzymatic activity may be regulated by endogenous compounds and through pharmacological compounds targeting mitoNEET.Support or Funding InformationThis work was supported by NSF CHE‐1806266 to M.A.M and M.E.K and UofL Mentored Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Grant to R.A.S.

Book Review--Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research

Book Review--Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research