Undergraduate research is widely recognized as a high-impact educational practice, but it is most often reserved for students who have completed multiple years of coursework in a discipline. At the same time, we believe research experiences can be identity-shaping and trajectory changing for first-year students that are still figuring out where they belong in STEM.
“Through LAS I was able to conduct research with different professors, where I was able to trial and error so to say, until I really found a passion in a part of the stem field I knew I really wanted to be a part of.” – LAS Scholar
In this blog post, we describe how we created mentored research opportunities at St. Lawrence University (SLU) for the first-year students in the Liberal Arts Science (LAS) Scholars S-STEM program, and we make three recommendations for how to create meaningful, mentored research opportunities for first-year students. We believe that these recommendations can be broadly applied across different disciplines and types of institutions.
How Did We Create Research Opportunities for First-Year Students?
Feeling that they don’t belong is often cited as a reason that students, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, leave STEM fields (Packard, 2016; Rainey et al, 2018). We hypothesized that encountering research early in their academic careers would help low-income and first-generation college students to develop a stronger sense of belonging to STEM and improved capacity in STEM skills, which would in turn lead to persistence, retention, and ultimately graduation with a STEM major. To that end, we designed our S-STEM program to have two research-focused cohort courses in the first year. It is important to note that students in our S-STEM program were allowed to major in any STEM field available at our university (including Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Data Science, Geology, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics, and Statistics).
In the fall semester, we offered a seminar course that met once per week for an hour. The primary goal of the course was to introduce the first-year students in our program to as many STEM fields and STEM faculty members as possible. Each week, there was a faculty guest speaker that described the path that led them to where they are now and described a project that they would like to work on with a student in the program. These guest speakers were all encouraged to describe a time where they “failed” to help normalize struggle. At the end of the semester, the students ranked the projects according to their interests, and each student was then matched with a faculty mentor and a project to work on during the spring semester. While we designed this experience to be a (pass/fail) course with low-stakes assignments, a regular seminar series would be an equally effective way to achieve the same objectives.
“We got to meet many different faculty from different fields. They discussed who they were, how they got into the field they are in, and what drew them into working at SLU. I think it was great way to move past feeling intimidated by professors and understand that they are human.” – LAS Scholar
In the spring semester, the students took a course that emphasized finding, reading, and writing literature reviews and scientific articles, while strengthening communication skills. The project they were working on with their assigned faculty mentor was the basis for all of their assignments in this course, creating a more authentic research experience in a classroom setting. Faculty mentors were modestly compensated for each research project mentored.
We conducted interviews with the faculty project mentors and surveys of our students. Nearly every faculty mentor praised this course with its individual mentorship model. A majority of students in the program felt that this course, with a mentored research experience, was highly beneficial. From our data sources, clear and consistent themes emerged. These themes form the basis of our three recommendations for creating mentored research opportunities for first-year students.
“starting research that early into my undergraduate career really set me up for the rest of my research career at SLU. I wouldn’t be the student I am without the class and research opportunities.” – LAS Scholar
Our Recommendations for Creating Mentored Research Experiences for First-Year Students
One of the central goals of our project was to help students develop their sense of belonging in STEM. The existing knowledge base on STEM retention suggests that students often decide early in their academic experiences if they belong in a discipline (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016) and that research experiences can help students find their sense of belonging and persist in STEM (Mills and Paxson, 2018; Johnson, 2016; Hernandez et al., 2018). Our recommendations all describe design choices that support belonging while allowing students to build their skills and grow their confidence through early research experiences.
Recommendation 1: Choose Accessibility Over Sophistication and Novelty
“A project that would have been boring for a senior was exciting for my first-year.” – faculty project mentor
“This was massive confidence boost. Without [this course], I would not be able to be in the position I am in right now (going to graduate school in the fall). I wouldn’t have the skills, the curiosity, the drive… This course pretty much helped build my future.” – LAS Scholar
Designing accessible projects signals to students that they are capable of participating in the research process in a meaningful way. Most of our faculty mentors focused on the idea that the project should be new to the student, rather than worrying about whether it was innovative in the discipline. Some of the most successful projects only required a background in high school algebra or introductory statistics, but they asked open-ended questions and gave students freedom to explore and determine the direction of the project. When students were able to fully engage with a problem, they gained confidence and began to see that they did belong in STEM. To make projects accessible, it is important to take the time to understand where exactly the student is and choose a project with that understanding in mind; prioritize projects that are technically accessible while still being intellectually open-ended.
Recommendation 2: Emphasize Process Over Product
“The actual project topic/subject is way less important than the experience of doing a project.” – faculty project mentor
Emphasizing process over product shifts the focus away from getting the “right answer” to embracing the uncertainty and learning inherent in the research process. The project should be the vehicle through which students develop the reproducible research skills and problem-solving skills that they can apply in other contexts. In reality, the actual results students obtain are unlikely to be the reason a student persists in STEM. Rather, they persist because of what they learned they can do: the skills they gain, the growth in confidence, and the sense of belonging they develop. When mentors emphasize process over product, students learn to value reflection, iteration, revision, and problem-solving.
Recommendation 3: Normalize Struggle and Redefine Success
“Framing the project as a success, whether they get as far as they intended or find the result they were searching for, is important. These projects are a great time to let students know that ‘failed’ projects are often still meaningful.” – faculty project mentor
“I feel like I’m ready to work through challenges in the industry. I’m very grateful for this program allowing me to go through SLU on my own unique path and for the lessons we learned on imposture syndrome.” – LAS Scholar
Normalizing struggle helps students understand that uncertainty is not a personal failure but is instead a natural part of the research process. Experienced researchers know that the research process does not always, or even usually, follow a straight line from point A to point B. Young researchers on the other hand, are likely to interpret challenge as a sign that they don’t belong in STEM. Mentors should emphasize that it is natural for project goals to evolve and that changing goals does not make a project unsuccessful. Mentors can also normalize struggle by sharing their own experiences with setbacks and failures.
Conclusions
Successful research experiences for first-year students do not need to be novel or sophisticated. When mentors choose accessible projects, emphasize process, and normalize struggle, they create an environment where students can grow their confidence and develop a sense of belonging in STEM, both of which will help students persist in STEM. Accessible research projects are possible in most disciplines; students in our program completed projects in biology, chemistry, computer science, environmental science, mathematics, statistics, and physics. Early research experiences can help students see where they belong in STEM and help them persist long after the research experience is over. By intentionally designing early research experiences around accessibility, process, and resilience, mentors and institutions can remove common barriers to STEM persistence.
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Adam Hill (co-PI) for teaching the first-year courses described in this blog post. We also thank all of the St. Lawrence University STEM faculty mentors who mentored first-year student research projects as part of our S-STEM program. We also thank our fellow co-PIs Erika Barthelmess and Jessica Sierk.
References
Hernandez, P. R., Woodcock, A., Schultz, P. W., & Estrada, M. (2018). “Undergraduate Research Experiences Broaden Diversity in the Scientific Workforce.” BioScience, 68, 204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix163
Johnson, T. (2016). “The Collaborative Undergraduate Research Lab: Using Yeast Genetics To Create An Authentic Research Experience For Freshman.” The FASEB Journal, 30, 104.2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1096/fasebj.30.1_supplement.104.2
Mills, K. V. & Paxson, J. (2018) “The First-year Research Advancement Program (FRAP): Fostering Persistence of Underrepresented Students in Biology and Chemistry.” The FASEB Journal, 32, 535.19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1096/fasebj.2018.32.1_supplement.535.19
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2016). Barriers and opportunities for 2-year and 4-year STEM degrees: Systemic change to support students’ diverse pathways. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/21739
Packard, B.W. (2016). Successful STEM mentoring initiatives for underrepresented students: A research-based guide for faculty and administrators. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Rainey K. et al (2018). Race and gender differences in how sense of belonging influences decisions to major in STEM. Int J STEM Educ., 5(1):10. doi: 10.1186/s40594-018-0115-6.
