Objectives
At the end of this section, the mentors will be able to:
- Evaluate the mentees’ existing skills and organization scheme and provide the undergraduate researcher with the relevant resources to expand their knowledge to accomplish defined research tasks.
- Collaboratively set standards for file structures that are meant to be shared such as data, reports, codes, notebooks, etc.
- Effectively lead regular check-in meetings with the undergraduate researcher that address the work accomplished in the past and define the short-term goals before the following check-in.
- Provide the undergraduate researcher with a flexible and comfortable lab experience and contribute to their scientific development through a variety of activities.
Description
This unit will cover the basics of managing an undergraduate research project as the term progresses. The goal of this unit is to provide the mentor with topics to be addressed in regular check-ins as well as how to generate involvement and a sense of belonging for the undergraduate researcher. Topics covered will go from discussing lab culture, standards for authorship credit, shared experience, and advice to addressing the work that has been done since the last regular check-in and planning the future short-term goals and tasks to accomplish before the following meeting. Providing undergraduate researchers with a fulfilling learning and flexible experience that enhances their confidence and skills will be emphasized. Additional discussion will touch on the topic of sharing and storing data to enable reproducibility of the work, specifically applied to remote research.
Supporting Material
Mentors will be provided with a list of sample topics to address in regular check-in meetings as well as a list of potential integrated development environments/text editors and tips and tricks to structure computational data. We will also provide a list of strategies and teaching tools to encourage undergraduate researchers to learn how to independently debug their code.
