Collaborating with Students

Photo of the Keck Ohio Project Team 1999.

Team of student and faculty researchers for the 1999 Keck Ohio Project. Photo from their project website: http://www.wooster.edu/geology/KeckOhio.html.

Faculty members who are successful at collaborating with student researchers help their students to find meaningful research questions appropriate to the students' experience, set clear expectations for their students, give their students appropriate guidance throughout their research projects, and regularly check in with their students to monitor progress, help solve problems, and celebrate successes (Kurdziel and Libarkin, 2002 ; NAS, NAE, IOM, 1997). Some also create teams of student researchers working on similar or related questions. Together, you and your students can accomplish more than you can by yourself, provided you do a good job of mentoring your student researchers; the resources below show you how.

Jump down to

Case Studies
Written Guidelines for Student Researchers
Booklets and Articles
Thoughts and Tips from Workshop Leaders
Tips from Workshop Alums

Case Studies

The links below take you to brief profiles of faculty members from a range of institutions who have been successful in collaborating with student researchers, in a variety of ways.

Rowan Lockwood, at the College of William and Mary, has a group of undergraduate student researchers who work independently on related problems, meeting together once a week to discuss their progress and their goals for the coming week.
Greg Hancock, at the College of William and Mary, has students in his Geomorphology class conduct research projects, (Microsoft Word 32kB Oct6 05) alone or in pairs. This serves a dual purpose of giving the students experience doing real research and having them do some preliminary exploration of research topics that interest Greg. By combining teaching and research, this allowed Greg to launch his research program when finding time for research was especially challenging -- when he had just started teaching.
Basil Tikoff, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. student researchers. Discussions amongst students working individually on unrelated projects fosters an atmosphere of collaborative intellectual engagement and broad thinking about geological questions.
Jill Singer, at Buffalo State College, has mentored undergraduates on many different kinds of research projects, including local environmental studies and multidisciplinary collaborative projects. While her students often collect data as a group, they then work independently to analyze portions of that data.
Jeff Marshall, at Cal Poly Pomona, has taken undergraduate student researchers to field areas as disparate as Costa Rica and southern California. In California, his team-based class research assignment provided the foundation (and the motivation) for two independent research projects.
Jeffrey Ryan, at the University of South Florida, has undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. student researchers. Each "level" of student works on a different part of the geochemical analysis of samples, making them dependent on (and interested in) each other's work. He also instills a sense of teamwork in his undergraduate researchers, empowering them to work together to solve their own problems when they can.
Lori Bettison-Varga, at the College of Wooster, is currently the Associate Dean for Research and Grants, the Director of the Keck Geology Consortium, and President-elect of CUR, the Council on Undergraduate Research. She enjoys mentoring undergraduate student researchers, particularly helping them to focus their efforts and take ownership of their projects.
Jenni Evans, at The Pennsylvania State University, works with undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. students. She meets with them regularly, both individually and as a group. Presenting their work to each other on a regular basis helps her students to learn from each other while making steady progress in their own work.

Resources

Written guidelines for graduate students, from

Tracy Gregg, at SUNY Buffalo. (Microsoft Word 26kB Oct4 05)
Tracy's guidelines spell out her expectations for her students re: her lab space and equipment, weekly meetings, time management, and communication.
Todd Halihan, Oklahoma State University. (Microsoft Word 36kB Nov10 05)
Todd's guidelines take a blunt, no-holds-barred approach, alerting his students to his expectations and explaining why he expects so much of them. The tone of these written guidelines is balanced by Todd's twice-daily availability to his students.
Kathy Licht, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. (Microsoft Word 28kB Dec1 05):
Kathy's guidelines explain what her students can expect from her, and what she expects from them in return, particularly in relation to time and lab equipment.

Booklets and articles

Chemical & Engineering News (Volume 85, Number 6, pp. 39-41, February 5, 2007) asked several faculty members from around the world about Building and Maintaining a Productive Lab. Their responses are digested into a list of the top 10 tips. The article also includes a brief list of suggested further reading.
The Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (CoSEPuP) of the National Research Council has written a thorough, peer-reviewed report called Adviser, Teacher, Role Model, Friend: On Being a Mentor to Students in Science and Engineering.
The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) has a booklet on Reinvigorating the Undergraduate Experience, which describes twenty successful models for undergraduate research.
The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) also has a booklet on How to Mentor Undergraduate Researchers.
The high-leverage impact of one "non-traditional" student on an academic research program, an article from Rick Reis' "Tomorrow's Professor" Mailing List, describes the unexpected benefits mechanical engineering Professor Lisa Pruitt (UC-Berkeley) gained by accepting a physically disabled graduate student -- including the growth of her research program.
Kurdziel and Libarkin (JGE, 2002) article on mentoring undergraduate researchers -- this link takes you to a description in the SERC Catalog, from which you can follow a link to download the full text of the article.

Thoughts and tips from Early Career Workshop leaders

Richelle Allen-King's Top ten tips for working with research students. Richelle's brief, pithy advice for getting the most out of collaborative research with your students. Richelle teaches at SUNY-Buffalo.
What are the scientific habits of the mind that you want to engender in your students? (Microsoft Word 22kB Nov17 05) David Mogk's open-ended questions about scientific habits of the mind, and the current unabridged list of answers from Early Career Workshop participants. Dave teaches at Montana State University.

Tips from Early Career Workshop Alums

Early career faculty typically overestimate the abilities of students; be prepared to give them more guidance/time
Build a sense of community amongst your research students, e.g., frisbee with faculty, or informal (but time structured) meetings.
I clearly remember a comment from Richelle, which was to combine teaching and research when, and if, possible. I didn't realize the importance of this until recently, when I realized that my time is so valuable and in short supply. This past winter, I had the opportunity to teach a short, one month long winter term course with 8 undergrads. They learned the analytical methods that I use in my research, and generated a data set that I used in an NSF grant proposal in February. I was amazed that undergrads were actually able to do the analytical work (never underestimate the ability of an undergrad), and impressed at the quality of the data at the end of the day. It was a huge amount of work, but 50% of the students in the course wanted to continue the work, and are now engaged in research with me.

« Previous Page Next Page »