UNDERGRADUATE MENTORING … forming a group for undergraduate researchers.

I formed a class that tackled the “basics” of undergraduate research while at UC Davis and it was basically a lifesaver. Why? Because, by doing this I didn’t have to repeat myself 50 times when teaching a student a new skillset (meaning if two students needed it -- I didn’t have to independently teach them both) and the structure was there if I wanted students in my group to keep making progress but I had to travel. It is with this in mind, that I encourage you to form a course, a “reading group,” or a meeting time where you discuss research skills with all of the new researchers in your lab (heck, include the new graduate students too if they are willing). 
 
Topics that you should ABSOLUTELY include (from my experience):

1. The hidden language of academia (ref 1). The number of times someone says to me, “These students just don’t understand how much work it takes to be a faculty member!” or “What do these students think I do all day??” Well, why do you think that is? Whose job is it to illuminate all of the hidden work that goes behind the long struggle to tenure track in the academy? Or, to illuminate the work that it takes to be a graduate student? And, how do we get there/what resources are there to find out? By tackling the hidden language and curricula in academia, you are leveling the playing field for first generation students, BIPOC students, students with disabilities or who are neurodiverse, and any other under-represented minorities who have been excluded in the past. This will not only make your job easier, because students will understand your workload and what you are working on or doing beyond teaching, but it will also give your students confidence to be in the academic space. 
2. How to read scientific literature (the subject of another blog post in the future). I am going to go ahead and say this bluntly: your department is not teaching undergraduate students how to read scientific literature in their coursework. If the students in your department are lucky, someone showed them Mendeley or Endnote and that was the long and the short of it. Do yourself a favor early on and teach students how to read an abstract, find a hypothesis in a paper, explain someone else’s figure, and determine the main findings of an article. If you do this, then students will be able to read literature on their own and actually retain and apply what they are reading. If you don’t, students will spend hours googling terms that are not helping them get the main point and will quickly get overwhelmed. 
3. How to network via email/send work emails/communicate with scientific colleagues. This is a quick one, takes maybe an hour, and you will have just seriously improved your students’ chances at getting into graduate school or finding a job. Do this for yourself, so that you’re not confused about what a student is trying to communicate to you via email and so that they can communicate to other labs, PI’s, graduate students, (what have you) and you won’t have to monitor them. 
4. The do’s and don’ts of writing scientifically. At some point you as a scientific writer had an “Aha!” moment about scientific writing. Jot those moments down and just teach them directly to your students. I have had 3 specific moments in my career when someone has had the foresight to take something I had written or that they had written and edited in front of me while explaining what I was doing. I learned so much from these experiences and they were priceless to me. I am not advocating that you live edit a student’s writing in front of other students- don’t do this. But you can teach these rules to students in your group, which will make them better writers. Or take a minute to model how you self-edit your own work. Teaching them these rules will also save you time, because in the end, hopefully, the students in your lab are turning around products and you will have to edit them. Wouldn’t it have been nice if you had taken an hour to teach your students active voice? (Instead of spending hours flagging every time them use it in their drafts?)

 
Of course, there are many other things you could do. Maybe a GIS toolkit you use all of the time, or a data analysis technique. Maybe you find it important for students to be able to give elevator talks or make posters. These are skills that you can teach once to a group and will give students in your group the ability to be more independent. 
 
Linked here is a course schedule that I use to teach students working with me skills I think are important. I like to use the first five minutes of every meeting time to tackle issues with the hidden language of academia and other professional development. I use this as a guide, and UC Davis is on the quarter system. I do teach students basic skills for a full year, one hour a week. It just works best for my schedule and time commitments. Feel free to build off of it, if you think it would be useful. If you are a graduate student wanting to do this, feel free to reach out to me and I will help you figure out a way to create it in your dept. and get credit for your work. 

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