Ethnography & Evaluation Research, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0580
Ethnography & Evaluation Research, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0580.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2017 Spring;16(1). doi: 10.1187/cbe.16-07-0229.
Undergraduate research is often hailed as a solution to increasing the number and quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates needed to fill the high-tech jobs of the future. Student benefits of research are well documented but the emerging literature on advisors' perspectives is incomplete: only a few studies have included the graduate students and postdocs who often serve as research advisors, and not much is known about why research advisors choose to work with undergraduate researchers. We report the motivations for advising undergraduate researchers, and the related costs and benefits of doing so, from 30 interviews with research advisors at various career stages. Many advisors stated intrinsic motivations, but a small group of early-career advisors expressed only instrumental motivations. We explore what this means for how advisors work with student researchers, the benefits students may or may not gain from the experience, and the implications for training and retaining research advisors who can provide high-quality research experiences for undergraduate students.
本科研究通常被视为增加未来高科技工作所需的科学、技术、工程和数学专业毕业生数量和质量的解决方案。学生从研究中受益的情况有充分的记录，但关于顾问观点的新兴文献并不完整：只有少数研究包括了通常担任研究顾问的研究生和博士后，而且对于研究顾问选择与本科生合作的原因知之甚少。我们从 30 名处于不同职业阶段的研究顾问的访谈中报告了指导本科生研究人员的动机，以及这样做的相关成本和收益。许多顾问表示了内在动机，但一小部分职业早期的顾问只表达了工具性动机。我们探讨了这对顾问如何与学生研究人员合作、学生从这种经历中可能获得或可能无法获得的收益，以及对培训和留住能够为本科生提供高质量研究经验的研究顾问的影响意味着什么。
