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Tips for Mentoring Students

Some tips and best practices for mentoring students:

  • Set regular meeting times to talk about the student’s progress and any issues or questions the student has encountered. Early in the experience, meet frequently to ensure that the student understands your expectations and how to meet them.
  • Take some time at the beginning of the experience to help the student design a project that fits with his or her interests and that is manageable within the timeframe allowed. Some students will already be experienced designing research questions and projects, but many students will not.
  • Email is a good way to stay in contact between meetings. You could consider asking the student to email you periodically with a short paragraph providing an update on their experience.
  • Define clear, reasonable, and challenging expectations for the student. Remember that these are undergraduate students who may not have much if any, internship or research experience. The best Connecting Experiences will give students the opportunity to be successful while pushing the students to learn new skills and ways of thinking.
    • Recognize that, given the current circumstances of the pandemic, both you and the student may be facing difficulties. Have realistic expectations of the student and yourself with this in mind.
  • Encourage the student to share the results of his or her experience, whether by creating a poster and presenting at a poster session (including the annual BDP poster session which will be virtual in April 2021), submitting an abstract to present at a conference, or submitting a paper to an undergraduate research journal.
  • Remember that the BDP team is here to help both you and the student. Please feel free to reach out to us for assistance if you or the student has any concerns, if the student is not responsive to you, or if the student’s experience is unexpectedly impacted by the pandemic.