Mentoring Philosophy and Experience

I have served as a research mentor to a diverse array of students, ranging from freshman to senior undergraduates, during my graduate career. These students have had variable levels of experience in a lab or research setting. As someone who came into graduate school with little research experience, I understand the difficulties of getting started in research and thus feel that my role in assisting these undergraduates begin their research careers should be to help them develop skills for conducting research, learn more about their own interests, develop a sense of independence in research, and build their communication skills.

Help the students develop their “toolbox” and research interests: As a mentor, I work to ensure that students develop the core skills they need to pursue their research interests. I discuss interests and potential questions with each student during our early meetings to help them identify potential areas of research inquiry that are relevant to their interests and goals. I will help them decide on a general topic and, as needed, make suggestions based on their individual interests. I then work with them to narrow down to a focused question. Once the question is formulated, I begin helping the students develop the requisite “toolbox” through workshop-style, hands-on exercises with real data and introductory lessons in the theory behind the methods being used.

Help students develop a sense of independence: I aim to help students foster independence in their research and scholarly development. In the early stages of their research program, I help students advance their skills and confidence to become more independent in their work. My role then shifts from that of a teacher to that of a senior colleague, offering advice, guidance, and helping adjust or modify their research methods, as they progress. I am always willing to take the time to help my students work through problems and develop their research methods.

Help students develop research communication skills: Although the research aspect of mentoring is important, I feel it equally essential to help students develop abilities in presentations and in writing manuscripts on their research. These can be very difficult skills to acquire and I feel it is important to follow through and help my students develop a finished product for publication after they put in many hours of diligent research. I assist my students in developing presentations by giving feedback and helping them to clearly communicate the research.

Mentoring Experience: Currently, I am a mentor for a Genome-2-Phenome research course at Boise State University. The goal of this course is to provide undergraduate and graduate students experience in Genome-2-Phenome research methods and expand their methodological toolbox. During graduate school, I had the pleasure of mentoring several outstanding students. I worked with six undergraduate students at UFL, primarily conducting research using ENMs and basic wet-lab methods.