Mentoring Undergraduate Students

Welcome to Mentor Training for Mentors of Undergraduate Students

Course Description

There are two free Mentor Training courses currently offered on MyNRMN:

• Mentoring Undergraduate Students (this course)
• Mentoring Grad Students, Post Docs & Early Career Faculty 

Course Overview

This self-directed course is designed to help faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, or graduate students optimize their mentoring relationships with undergraduate mentees. The course predominantly addresses research mentoring that occurs within biomedical, behavioral, and social science fields. However, many of the principles and approaches covered in this course are applicable to other disciplines and other types of mentoring relationships.

Objectives

The course learning materials, activities, and assignments are designed to help you meet the following learning objectives:

1. Appreciate and communicate to mentees the importance of mentoring in their development as researchers
2. Articulate the pros and cons of different mentoring models
3. More effectively fulfill the many roles and responsibilities a research mentor may be expected to perform
4. Engage in research mentoring in a more structured and intentional way, with attention to navigating the specific phases of the relationship
5. Proactively apply specific strategies to build and maintain effective research mentoring relationships
6. Identify and address challenges that might arise in a research mentoring relationship
7. Routinely reflect on and adapt your research mentoring practices

Structure

The course is divided into a series of self-paced modules. The average completion time is 2-3 hours. The most time-consuming element, but also the most valuable, is the completion of the reflection questions for each module. Some participants also spend time exploring the supplemental resources that we provide.

Course Authors

• Anne Marie Weber-Main, Ph.D.
  Associate Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School
• Amy Prunuske, Ph.D.
  Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Medical College of Wisconsin - Central Wisconsin
• Esam E. El-Fakahany, Ph.D.
  Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs & Graduate Education, Professor of Experimental & Clinical Pharmacology, University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy

Instrumental Persons

We would also like to recognize and express our deep gratitude for the contributions of the following people who shared in the creation and implementation of this course:

• Jamboor K. Vishwanatha, PhD, National Research Mentoring Network-Resource Center
• Toufeeq Ahmed, PhD, National Research Mentoring Network-Resource Center
• Erika Thompson, PhD, National Research Mentoring Network-Resource Center
• Damaris Javier, MA, National Research Mentoring Network-Resource Center
• Aidan Hoyal, MSIS, MA, National Research Mentoring Network-Resource Center 
• Zainab Latif, MCS, National Research Mentoring Network-Resource Center
• Geri Huibregtse, University of Minnesota
• Catherine Furry, University of Minnesota
• Janet Shanedling, University of Minnesota

Funding

MyNRMN is funded by National Institutes of Health, Grant Number: 1U24GM132217-01

This course was originally titled "Optimizing the Practice of Mentoring" by the University of Minnesota. Course development and revision were supported by: Grant Number 1UL1RR033183 from the National Center for Research Resources and Grant Number 8UL1TR000114 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the University of Minnesota Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI); and by Grant Number U54GM119023 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to Boston College. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the CTSI or the NIH.

This course licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 Unported License.