Participating in research gives students first-hand experience of a potential career path and provides graduate students and postdocs with important mentoring opportunities.
In the past decade, I’ve mentored 18 undergraduates in my laboratory, with the majority of them going on to pursue graduate degrees in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering or mathematics) and co-authoring papers.
Nearly every tier 1 research university in the United States has an undergraduate research programme, and uptake exceeds 90% at some institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Students in these programmes are a valuable resource for research labs and vice versa. Although beneficial to the lab overall, mentoring undergraduates requires investment in education and technical training. Adapting from lectures to life in a research lab is an abrupt transition, and is one that students and mentors should be prepared to navigate together.
In my experience, students typically progress through three stages during their time in the lab. Although not everyone will move through all of the stages, setting aspirational goals can help to draw undergraduates into the excitement of research and keep them focused on the task in mind. They are: