Mentoring undergraduates has been important to my development as a scientist. Teaching others makes me look at my own work more carefully and having more skilled people working on my projects sometimes makes them go faster. Mentoring is also very rewarding; I went to graduate school because of my research experiences as an undergraduate, and I want to pay it forward. As I have learned to be a good mentor, I have developed several core principles that guide my interactions with students.
A good mentoring relationship begins with honesty and clear expectations.
Trust needs to go both ways in a mentoring relationship. I need to trust students to produce high quality results that contribute to research, and they need to trust me to guide them effectively.
From the first time I talk with a student about research, I try to be very upfront about both the fun things (look at all this cool research you could help with!) and the not as fun (I expect undergraduates to help out with lab dishes). I also tell them that the research questions they will be working on are not things that I know the answers to, but we will be working together to figure them out. I encourage them right from the start to ask questions whenever they come up – better to check first than to spend a day (or a semester) doing something the wrong way. I find that having a form that the mentee and I fill out together at the beginning of every semester is a good way to keep track of expectations on both ends.
Maintaining open communication helps me to focus on each mentee as an individual. Students may have different goals for what they want to get out of their research experience. Some come in already wanting to go to graduate school, while others want to see if research is for them. As a mentor, part of my job is to help my mentees with their goals and to give them a realistic impression of what conducting environmental chemistry research is like. My research is inherently interdisciplinary, so there is space for students who want to focus on a range of topics and who have a wide range of lab skills and critical thinking abilities, both of which are important to consider when designing a project with a mentee. For example, I have mentored students from the chemistry, biochemistry, biological systems engineering, and political science (focus environmental studies) departments who worked on projects ranging from maintaining a lab inventory, to conducting plant toxicity assays, to developing experiments on contaminant sorption to soil. Recognizing and building on individual skills and interests helps to develop mentee’s independence in the lab as well as their self-efficacy. Focusing on the individual allows me to adjust my mentoring style to work with mentees with diverse skills and backgrounds.
All students working in the lab should be contributing to real science.
Everyone in lab should be working on something that is contributing to real science and that they should understand the scientific context to what they are doing. Even if a student is hired just to make nutrient solutions and take care of the (research related) plants, we discuss why we are growing the plants in such a specific manner, what experiments the plants will be used for, and why those experiments matter in a broader context. With lab work, it is easy to get caught up in the details of each individual task, but most of us went into science because we are interested in the bigger picture of learning about cool stuff that might be able to help the world. Making sure that a mentee understands how their work feeds into a bigger picture not only helps them stay interested in the work, but also helps them keep track of the seemingly insignificant details of each task. For example, knowing that the next step of the research includes a mathematical model based on pH makes it easier to remember to write down the pH of each and every sample. Regardless of level, I encourage all mentees to have a sense of ownership for their lab work, and offer them opportunities to present their research at appropriate events.
Social engagement is an important aspect of being part of a lab.
Although focus on the individual is an important aspect of mentoring, so is building a community. I want my mentees to feel comfortable in the lab, and part of that is knowing the other people there and understanding a little bit about who they are and what they do. When I work with undergraduates or graduate students completing rotations I have them attend lab meetings with me and the rest of my PIs group, where they meet other graduate students and see the different kinds of projects going on in our lab. Our lab meetings are a place where people sometimes present about a particularly tricky part of their research and ask for advice. This allows my mentees to see the messy side of science – even people who know a lot have to spend time troubleshooting to get their science to work. Being part of a great community has contributed greatly to my success in graduate school, and I want to make sure my mentees understand that it can help them as well.