Beverly Louie

Comparing Mentor and Mentee Perspectives in a Research-Based Undergraduate Mentoring Program

At the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), a research-based undergraduate mentoring program is now in its second year of implementation. The program, Your Own Undergraduate Research Experience (YOU’RE@CU) has three main goals: improve the retention rate of diverse groups in undergraduate engineering, build undergraduate interest in engineering research, and prepare graduate students to take on leadership roles in either academia or industry-based research careers. In YOU’RE@CU, undergraduate students are paired with a graduate mentor and work in the graduate student’s lab several hours a week. Undergraduate mentees enroll in a one-credit seminar course focusing on research and graduate school opportunities, and are assessed via pre- and post-surveys to gauge their excitement and interest in engineering. The undergraduates also respond to biweekly qualitative reflective questions while participating in the program. Graduate mentors complete several reflective questions about their experiences and are required to complete pre- and post-assessments.Adopting a person-centered, case study approach, this paper focuses on two telling examples of research-based mentoring relationships in the YOU’RE@CU program. Given identical mentor training through YOU’RE@CU, two graduate students start the Spring 2012 semester by meeting with their mentees to launch a research project. By examining application, pre-survey, reflective questions, and post-survey responses from these four participants, the differences in the trajectory of the two paired mentoring relationships can be clearly seen over the course of one semester. This close examination of two disparate mentoring relationships is instructive in understanding the subtle details that create either a positive learning environment or an uncomfortable lab situation for young engineers, and assists program administrators in making improvements in subsequent years.Copyright

Assessing Efficacy of a New Research-Oriented Peer Mentoring Program: YOU’RE@CU

At the University of Colorado, Boulder, a new program designed to link graduate students with 1st and 2nd year undergraduate students through engineering research projects and mentoring relationships was initiated in Spring 2011. Your Own Undergraduate Research Experience at the University of Colorado (YOU’RE@CU) has three main goals: (1) increase retention of undergraduate students in engineering, particularly women and underrepresented minorities (URMs); (2) excite undergraduate student interest in research projects and future careers in academia or industry; (3) provide graduate students with training and hands-on mentoring experience with the expectation that this will positively influence graduate student choices to seek a career in academia. This paper illustrates the details of the YOU’RE@CU program during its pilot implementation in Spring 2011. The assessment strategy and methods are also explained, with presentation of qualitative data and discussion of the overall data analysis process.Copyright

Work in progress: First year engineering women: A qualitative investigation of retention factors

Many universities face disturbing trends in the retention, underrepresentation and socialization of women students in engineering. The focus of this present study is the retention of first-year women students currently enrolled in a large state college of engineering in the Rocky Mountain region. Eight hour-long focus groups were conducted consisting of four to ten first-year women in a first-year engineering design projects course. Participants were asked a structured set of questions to investigate several topics. These focus groups were video-taped and later transcribed for analysis. Six research questions were posed for the current study: Do women express a loss of interest during the first year of the program?; Is there a chilly climate for first-year women in the college?; Do womens self-efficacy levels change during the first year of the program?; Do academic performance levels play a role in womens retention in engineering during the first year?; Do women have adequate support structures in the college during the first year?; Does the structure of the academic program instill career awareness in the first year? Implications for strategies to boost retention and an explication of the themes from the qualitative analysis will be discussed in the paper.