Tsai, J. Y., & Kotys-Schwartz, D. A., & Louie, B., & Ferguson, V. L., & Berg, A. N. (2012, June), Graduate Students Mentoring Undergraduates in Research: Attitudes and Reflections about these Experiences  Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--21435

\bibitem{asee_peer_21435}
  Tsai, J. Y., \& Kotys-Schwartz, D. A., \& Louie, B., \& Ferguson, V. L., \& Berg, A. N. (2012, June), \emph{Graduate Students Mentoring Undergraduates in Research: Attitudes and Reflections about these Experiences}
  Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, San Antonio, Texas.
  10.18260/1-2--21435

Janet Y. Tsai, Daria A. Kotys-Schwartz, Beverly Louie, Virginia Lea Ferguson, and Alyssa Nicole Berg.  "Graduate Students Mentoring Undergraduates in Research: Attitudes and Reflections about these Experiences".  2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas, 2012, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2012.  https://peer.asee.org/21435 Internet.  14 Jan, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_21435}
  Janet Y. Tsai, Daria A. Kotys-Schwartz, Beverly Louie, Virginia Lea Ferguson, and Alyssa Nicole Berg.
  "Graduate Students Mentoring Undergraduates in Research: Attitudes and Reflections about these Experiences".
  \emph{2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, San Antonio, Texas, 2012, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2012.
  https://peer.asee.org/21435 Internet.  14 Jan, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_21435
author = "Janet Y. Tsai, Daria A. Kotys-Schwartz, Beverly Louie, Virginia Lea Ferguson, and Alyssa Nicole Berg"
title = "Graduate Students Mentoring Undergraduates in Research: Attitudes and Reflections about these Experiences"
booktitle = "2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2012"
month = "June"
address = "San Antonio, Texas"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/21435}
number = {10.18260/1-2--21435}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -          Mixed-Methods Assessment of Research-Based Undergraduate                        Mentoring ProgramMentoring programs in colleges and universities across the nation are becoming increasinglyprevalent as a means to help both students and faculty persist in engineering. However, themajority of existing engineering mentoring programs lack rigorous assessment and consequentlysuccessful data driven mentoring models are difficult to find within the engineering educationcommunity.One-on-one mentoring relationships between 1st or 2nd year engineering undergraduate studentsand graduate student mentors were established and monitored during a semester-long formalresearch mentoring program at a large state university. Each undergraduate student was expectedto attend a weekly one hour seminar to learn more about the process of engineering research andwork three to five hours per week in a research lab, supervised by a graduate student mentor, inorder to earn one course credit. Pilot implementation of the program targeted underrepresentedminorities and female undergraduate students in the hopes that hands-on research experienceguided by a graduate student would improve undergraduate retention of these populations, apriority of the engineering college. The mentoring program also strived to increase interest inengineering careers and research for all students while providing graduate students withexperience mentoring younger engineers. Progress towards these goals was assessed through anexplanatory mixed-methods approach beginning with initial quantitative surveys, followed byqualitative weekly responses to online reflective questions, and concluded by a final round ofquantitative surveys including open ended qualitative questions. Both undergraduate studentsand graduate mentors were assessed though qualitative and quantitative means.The data from the eight mentee/mentor pairs in the program’s initial year suggest that theundergraduate mentees had generally positive experiences in the program (average programsatisfaction = 78, min 62, max 100 on normalized likert scale 0-100), and seven of the eightundergraduates believed they would continue pursuing engineering majors following programcompletion. The graduate students had a wider range of satisfaction with the program (averageprogram satisfaction = 56, min 33, max 79 on normalized likert scale 0-100). Qualitative datareveal that several graduate students felt like poor mentors due to difficulty relating to theirmentees or trouble defining a meaningful and relevant one-semester research project achievableby a 1st or 2nd year undergraduate. However, the majority of undergraduate mentees indicateincreased feelings of excitement towards engineering research and enhanced understanding ofthe engineering research process regardless of their mentor’s reported satisfaction.The results of this preliminary study indicate areas for programmatic and assessmentimprovements in subsequent years of the research program implementation and are relevant forsimilar mentoring programs at other institutions of higher learning. As mentoring programscontinue to be a major strategy for increased retention of women and underrepresentedminorities across the nation, the development of appropriate assessment tools to validate theeffectiveness of mentoring is critical.
AU  - Janet Y. Tsai
AU  - Daria A. Kotys-Schwartz
AU  - Beverly Louie
AU  - Virginia Lea Ferguson
AU  - Alyssa Nicole Berg
CY  - San Antonio, Texas
DA  - 2012/06/10
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Graduate Students Mentoring Undergraduates in Research: Attitudes and Reflections about these Experiences
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/21435
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--21435
ER  -