Engineering Education Lab

Development of engineering students' technical and professional competencies


Research Streams

Mentoring and Diversity

We study essential mentoring practices to support diverse engineering students’ inquiry, investigation, and discovery in research settings.

    • Mentoring undergraduate research students

    • Research experiences for undergraduates


It is well known that participating in research yields multiple positive outcomes for undergraduate students. A critical factor for successful undergraduate research experience, however, is quality mentoring. In this line of research, we investigate the essential mentoring practices of graduate students and postdocs in undergraduate research settings. Using a two-phase sequential mixed method design and the Cognitive Apprentice theory, we identify practices that successful graduate student and postdoc mentors have employed in various stages of undergraduate research, and develop a survey that assesses the mentor beliefs that inform their mentoring knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

Our research in mentoring also supports our passion for increasing the number of underrepresented student population (e.g., female and African-American) in aerospace engineering. Based on our research work on mentoring, we have an REU site, titled, “Launching Aerospace’s Underrepresented Students into the Next Chapter – Unmanned Aerial Systems (LAUNCH-UAS)” https://www.aere.iastate.edu/launchuas/.


Relevant publications: