By the end of my undergraduate career, I worked on six research projects, presented
some of this work, and prepared two manuscripts for publication (Hebl and Skorinko,
2005; Skorinko et al., 2006). More importantly, my early engagement in research instilled
in me an intellectual curiosity that I had not previously experienced. I started to
question everything, and I devoted time to think critically about what I was reading
and learning. My love of research grew daily and ultimately changed my career trajectory.
Now, as a professor, I find myself drawing upon these experiences, as well as best
practices, to develop strategies to conduct publishable research with undergraduate
students.
Before delving into the specifics, it is important to set up the institution and program
that I am in because this influences the strategies I utilize. My institution is a
small-medium private polytechnic institution that has recently moved from an R3 to
an R2 by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. It has a
distinct project-based curriculum that allows undergraduates to participate in a unique
study abroad program that centers on cross-cultural research experiences. High quality
research (including funding) and high quality teaching (including project advising)
are expected for tenure and promotion.
Psychological Science is an undergraduate only program within a Social Science department.
While Psychological Science tends to be a popular major (Princeton Review, 2018),
at my institution it is a smaller, albeit growing, major/minor program. All majors
complete a senior thesis. I teach and work with: majors, double majors, minors, those
curious about psychology, and those needing a social science requirement. There are
benefits (e.g., institutional norm of conducting research with undergraduates), but
also challenges (e.g., small number of majors) when engaging undergraduates in publishable
research.
Given these institutional parameters, my undergraduate experiences, and my role as
faculty, I utilize nine strategies to engage undergraduates in publishable research:
Mindset That All Research Is Publishable. By adopting the mindset that all research
is publishable, I am more engaged and invested in each project—whether my idea or
a student's idea. Since I rely on undergraduate research assistants, this mindset
is vital.
Enthusiasm. Research shows that undergraduates relish faculty that are enthusiastic
(and approachable) about their empirical investigations (Komarraju et al., 2010; Roberts
and Seaman, 2018). As an undergraduate, I gravitated toward faculty who were excited
about the work they were conducting. Therefore, I let my enthusiasm for research come
out to attract undergraduates to work with me.
Engage Early/Research First Approach. I engaged in research during my first year as
an undergraduate. I had no prior experience, but this was not a hindrance because
I was motivated and invested in the project so I wanted to learn methodology and statistics
along the way (Pacquiao, 2007). I conducted an ethnographic study that taught me the
art of interviewing. I also received a healthy dose of realism about what it takes
to conduct qualitative research. The oral histories were presented formally to the
community and published in a local magazine. Most importantly, I was hooked. I found
a love of asking questions, thinking deeply about topics, and I wanted to keep conducting
research. Later on, I discovered that my different research experiences helped me
learn methods and statistics better because I had real examples I could apply what
I was learning to.
Since early engagement was so important to my undergraduate career, I take a research
first approach. If a student wants to learn about research, they can join my lab,
regardless of their year or prior experience. I teach them what they need to know
along the way. I also use this approach in the classroom. Students conduct small research
projects to test theories and practice different methodologies (e.g., observation
study, interviews, surveys, or mini-experiments). Student testimonials support early
engagement, and others echo the benefits of early engagement as well (Detweiler-Bedell
and Detweiler-Bedell, 2019; Dutta et al., 2019).
Recruit Diverse Students. As an undergraduate, I worked in a diverse lab where different
perspectives regarding the research were discussed and incorporated into the projects.
I saw firsthand how these novel ideas strengthened the work we were doing. Valuing
this, I run a lab whose members are diverse in year in school, experience, academic
interests, ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, etc. There are challenges
to managing a diverse lab as it requires flexibility and time (Brew and Mantai, 2017;
Peifer, 2019). For example, some students may need to engage in paid work (in the
lab or elsewhere), some may struggle academically, and some may not feel like they
belong. However, the benefits for the students and the research are worth it. Diverse
students who engage in research develop stronger mentoring relationships, feel less
isolated, learn to think critically, and are more likely to pursue graduate school
(Chan, 2019; Frohardt, 2019; Peifer, 2019; Ahmad et al., under review). By incorporating
diverse minds into the process, the research conducted becomes stronger and more inclusive.
Meet Students Where They Are. When joining the lab, I try to match students on two
components: (1) interest in a particular project, and (2) skills they want to learn.
This stems from my own experiences because for my first project I simply wanted to
gain experience, but after that I had a better understanding of what else I wanted
to learn. With more experiences, my confidence and desire to tackle a project on my
own grew, and in my senior year I conducted two separate publishable experiments (Hebl
and Skorinko, 2005; Skorinko et al., 2006). I find many first-time research assistants
want to get their feet wet, but with time and more experience they crave something
more. So, I try to have projects in all phases, so I can match students' interests
and skills. We also encourage undergraduates to rotate and/or work in multiple labs.
I have found that meeting students where they are gets them hooked and keeps them
coming back.
Set Realistic Expectations. We seek different collaborators based on their strengths,
and we should do the same with undergraduates. As an undergraduate, I had time to
learn programs that my mentor did not have time to learn. For instance, I learned
video editing for one project and how to write code that allowed us to put studies
online and recruit a non-student population (this was before Survey Monkey, Qualtrics,
and MTurk). But, I needed help synthesizing the literature, conducting statistical
analyses, and dealing with reviewers. I have to remind myself that an undergraduate
does not have the same knowledge or motivation that I do for a project. Therefore,
I need to set realistic expectations. For instance, I cannot expect students to know
the intricate nuances of the theories as I do; rather, I have to help them develop
those insights. Likewise, I cannot expect them to know how to analyze data, but after
working through an example, I can have them apply that knowledge to a different research
question. To help articulate expectations, some have had success with lab learning
agreements/syllabi (Whiteside et al., 2007; Adams, 2019; Bloomfield et al., 2019;
Mendoza and Martone, 2019).
Develop Your Mentoring Style. We are not always given the opportunity to think about
and develop how we want to work with students. Thinking back to my undergraduate days,
my advisor used her enthusiasm for research to get students interested and engaged
in her work. Holmes and Roberts (2019) would classify this as a Mentor-as-a-Makeover-Artist
strategy because it gets students interested in one's own ideas. As a faculty member,
especially pre-tenure, I gravitated to this approach because I had the expertise and
natural enthusiasm to best guide projects. However, students do not have the depth
of knowledge, so involving them in this way can be challenging. Since all majors need
a thesis to graduate, I also cannot always rely on this strategy. Sometimes, I need
to allow students to explore their own ideas, but I need to transform those ideas
into something rigorous and publishable. Holmes and Roberts (2019) refer to this as
the Mentor-as-a-Sculptor style. In this approach, students take ownership of a project,
but the ideas typically fall outside the advisor's area of expertise making it more
challenging to mentor. I have found that I am more willing to engage in this mentoring
style now that I am post-tenure. Overall, taking time to think critically about how
I want to mentor students has helped in the management of the research projects.
Utilize Resources.
Institutional Resources. It is important to look at what your institution offers,
and see which of those resources can be useful (Dutta et al., 2019; Mickley Steinmetz
and Reid, 2019). For instance, I use our project-based curriculum to attract students
into the lab, and I encourage students to apply for the summer research fellowship.
I also utilize our study abroad program to engage students in publishable cross-cultural
research (Skorinko et al., 2015). However, it is important to note that cross-cultural
research requires care, sensitivity, and flexibility (Ashdown, 2019; Burns-Cusato
and Cusato, 2019; Hill and Karlin, 2019).
The Classroom. I also use the classroom to engage students in research. Regardless
of the topic, I always cover methodologies to provide a foundation for the research
we will discuss throughout the term. I also create assignments that incorporate these
methods. For instance, students test theories through observational studies or surveys/interviews.
While these projects will most likely not be published, they engage students and pique
their interest in research opportunities outside of class.
Research Methods/Statistics Courses. There are a number of different models for teaching
Research Methods and Statistics courses (LoSchiavo, 2018; McKelvie and Standing, 2018;
Mendoza and Martone, 2019). In my own course, I develop several 2 x 2 between-participant
projects that could be publishable. The ideas come from my lab, my colleagues', and
my collaborators'. Students rank their preferences, form into teams, and I use the
Mentor as a Make-Over Artist Approach (Holmes and Roberts, 2019) to help them take
ownership and develop the project. We utilize our participant pool and Amazon's Mechanical
Turk for data collection. In the end, students show deep learning and understanding
about experimental design and analysis, are excited about their work, and sometimes
it is publishable (most recent example: Riemer et al., 2018).
Collaboration. Like others, I also develop collaborations, research networks, and
mentoring opportunities with colleagues at my home institution and other institutions
(Bukach et al., 2019; Hammersley et al., 2019). However, all my collaborators know
that the work I conduct will involve undergraduate research assistants (and co-authors).
Be Mindful of Your Time. At each stage in my career, I needed to protect my time,
in different ways, to achieve tenure or promotion (Mendoza and Golden, 2019). This
special issue provides a number of different strategies to enable efficiency (Stefanucci,
2019) and management of undergraduate co-authors and teams (Adams, 2019; Mendoza and
Martone, 2019; Scisco et al., 2019; Wood, 2019). For instance, you can have students
in the lab mentor one another (Overman, 2019; Reavis and Thomas, 2019).
Conclusion
I realize the tremendous beneficial effect my undergraduate research experiences had
on my education (Lopatto, 2003; Russell et al., 2007). As others have reported, I
learned research was both tedious and eye-opening (Todd et al., 2004; Matthews and
Rose, 2018). I also developed skills and a mindset that would not have been possible
if I waited. I became intellectually curious, learned to think critically, and found
myself asking more questions (Hathaway et al., 2002). For the students I have engaged
early on, they are reporting the same outcomes. Thus, in my experience (as an undergraduate
and as a faculty member), the benefits of engaging undergraduates in publishable research,
especially early on, outweigh the challenges.
Author Contributions
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for
publication.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial
or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.