Advice from Viterbo University Faculty Research Mentors

A Compilation of Faculty Mentor Advice from the 2015 Summer Research Fellowship Program

• Participate in the summer program; it will enhance your research and teaching! It’s your chance to focus specifically on research. Enjoy the time!
• Immerse students in a culture of research as much as possible.
• Take advantage of being a Summer Research mentor in order to nurture students who have potential. Even if their project isn’t applicable to your own research agenda, it is an excellent opportunity to introduce students to the highly independent work of scholarly research—its patterns, rhythms, frustrations, and joys. In that vein, do not feel like you must say “yes” to every student who is interested. Motivation is key, as are their reasons for pursuing the fellowship. Reserve your time and energy for the students who don’t need micromanaging and whose ideas excite you.
• Use this program to continue your own research agenda. Team was told research had to be about some aspect of food defense in schools. From that, the students chose the research question and the methods. A win-win situation.
• Work as a team with another faculty mentor. This enables you to work with more students while giving them personal attention. It’s fun to be part of a group; students learn from the dynamics and the discussion. Highly recommended—especially for faculty who are mentoring students for the first time.
• Consider teaming up with another faculty member and student to conduct two independent studies on a similar topics.
• Choose your research team early in the year and meet frequently in the spring semester so that data collection can begin right away in May.
• Encourage undergraduate students living in La Crosse for the summer to apply for summer research funding.
• Know there are multiple way to select a topic: if you have a topic and research problem you need help with, that could be one avenue. The second avenue – and the one we utilized – was a student-selected project.
• Try to recruit a younger student into the team, so that in subsequent years that student can practice being a leader and a manager.
• Experience the joys of interdisciplinary, collaborative research teams. If you can make this work within your field of research, I highly recommend it.
• Consider a project that builds on a student course work—experiment, research paper, or Study Abroad.  The ownership of the subject material will allow the student to function more autonomously than they would if they assisted your research.
• It’s a rewarding experience to work with students within your area of expertise.  However, it would be fine for faculty to advise students conducting research outside the faculty member’s area of expertise if the students are motivated and passionate about studying a particular topic about which they have a clear idea.
• Interview students well before applications are due to assess their interest and competency in addressing research.  Be very selective in choosing undergraduate researchers. Some will want to do it to earn extra money over the summer and they show a lower level of enthusiasm.
• Student should be independent, academically self-disciplined, and capable of sustaining a long-term project.
• Scheduling twice-weekly team meetings, outlined prior to approving the student fellowship, were very beneficial.
• By adding graduate students to the mix, the undergraduate researchers benefitted.
• Be part of the application process along with the students, define the limits of the project and engage student on reaching the next level on the understanding of the chosen topic.
• Have time to learn and prepare IRB before Summer Research begins to submit in the spring or very early in the summer research term.
• Take time to carefully review these research proposals submitted by your prospective student(s), both for the program and for the IRB review (if applicable).
• Prepare and order as much as possible before the end of the spring semester. Preliminary work in the spring semester, especially drafting the initial IRB proposal and hosting team meetings to build rapport and introduce students to the literature, pay dividends later.
• Have a meeting that outlines the expectations in regards to faculty role and expectations for the summer research program.  Clearly identifying goals and direction for the student is a must.
• During the orientation, take a little extra time to make a solid plan and continue modifying that plan. The summer session goes MUCH quicker than "the summer". Be sure to plan a reasonable amount of time with room for failure and re-design.  Effectively communicate plan with students.
• Have the student develop an overall timeline at the beginning for what is going to happen each week. This ensures that goals will be met. By having the student come up with the timeline it helps the student acknowledge how fast this process will go and what they are getting into.
• Set expectations high and stay on top of students with measurable achievement goals at multiple points throughout the summer.  Hold students accountable somehow when they don't meet goals and deadlines.
• Keep constant communication with the students. Keep deadlines under control so mentor can revise mid and final reports.
• Establish weekly “to do” activities in each Monday’s email.  Hold weekly face-to-face meetings with students if possible.
• Give students some leeway to work independently, but make sure that they know you are there to help them when needed.
• Meet the student on a consistent schedule so as to regularly check the process and types of deliverables that were being turned in. Summer is a great time to meet the student with few distractions such as teaching, e-mails, advising, etc. which can detract from the bond created between student and faculty.
• Having a short turnaround time in returning feedback to the student is strongly suggested. In this way, it can put the student back on the refinement of one’s the written work earlier, encompassing all the facets of research.
• Delegate tasks to the students; it saves faculty time and gets students involved in all aspects of doing research. Don’t do it all yourself!
• If working with more than one student, separate the tasks so each student knows exactly what is expected of him/her that week.
• Help students identify their strengths and draw on these as you assign tasks.
• Patience is key; it took six years for our research project to develop. Developing mixed methods designs can be complex but can result in multiple projects.
• Require students to present at the Brown Bag Seminars to gain confidence in the art/skill of presenting, gain competency in the oral and visual portion of the research, gain preparedness of data analysis and expressing it, and promotion of research to Viterbo community.
• Try to attend as many lunch and learn sessions as possible. They are well done and informative.
• Have meetings with fellow faculty researchers—a different brown bag or different time, that could be used for sharing of tips (more easily done), answering questions, and generally uplifting each other as would be done in a community of scholars.
• Collaborative projects work the best when faculty members are able to share their expertise not only with the students, but also with their colleagues.
• Stay realistic.  Work backwards from the end goal(s).
• Develop a Moodle site or Dropbox folder for the research. We posted things like weekly minutes from meetings, working documents, articles, etc.
• Use OneDrive in Office365 – all students and faculty now have access to this – for sharing, editing, and archiving all research project documents. This proved to be a convenient, secure central location for students to post anything from large audio files to research articles to editable poster presentations. One specific example that was particularly useful: an Excel spreadsheet with tasks related to the interview process. Students could update this spreadsheet online after each of the tasks was completed, and the research team could in real-time and from any location see what remained to be done. This greatly reduced the number of email threads typically generated in a project like this. 
• Maintain close contact with additional emails to help answer questions during the week.
• Expect to spend a great deal of time with the students. I found that I really need to be here a good part of the time to help my students succeed.
• Student(s) should agree to regular communication and be open to advice and constructive criticism. 
• Student/faculty should respect each other’s time and meet all deadlines. 
• Always encourage questions and ask for student’s opinions. 
• If things don’t go as planned, have a back-up option so the work doesn’t stall.  We had “plan A” and “plan B” for data collection. 
• Say “thank you” often to the students. 
• Twice during the summer we bought lunch for the students and had “working lunch meetings.” Our first lunch was at the Mayo cafeteria – appropriate for our research project. During the analysis phase of the last week, we ordered in pizza. The upshot: students appreciate it. It is as much about the time spent together as the food. (It can be done inexpensively. Total for those two lunches combined for four students and two faculty was less than $40 – Mayo cafeteria is cheap, and so is pizza.)