The study involved 450 participants in the Summer Research Early Identification Program of The Leadership Alliance. The alliance is a national partnership among universities and the private sector that provides training and mentorship in research across all academic disciplines for students from underrepresented backgrounds, reported Physorg.
The new study in the journal CBE-Life Sciences Education focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics undergraduates who engaged in summer research through the program between 2013 and 2015.
"We receive wonderful emails from students who talk about the impact of their experiences," said study lead author Medeva Ghee, assistant professor of the practice in the Brown University School of Public Health and executive director of the Leadership Alliance, which is housed at Brown.
"But I think what's critical is to understand exactly what are those key program components — what about the experience is beneficial in helping students to develop their scientific identity and to clarify their career path."
To do that, the Leadership Alliance required data, so they gave detailed surveys to the students both in their first week of the eight- to 10-week summer research program and again in their last week. The surveys asked not only how students' research skills and professional perspectives may have changed, but also how they spent their time in the program and about experiences they had with faculty, postdoctoral and graduate student mentors.
Analysis of the data revealed several key insights about what moves the needle for students in their sense of self-efficacy in doing research, their understanding and interest in the research process and careers, and about the role that mentors play.
In the aggregate, for example, students left the program feeling at least somewhat more confident on every one of the 16 research skills the surveys covered. But some leaps were significantly greater than others. From relatively low initial rates, the proportion of students reporting confidence in skills such as mining data or using statistics software essentially doubled. But students reported relatively high initial confidence in understanding research overall and in ethical issues of research, so the increases in those areas were less dramatic.
Over their summers, students also made significant gains — to greater than 90 percent — in the proportion who professed understanding of the graduate school application process and graduate school life. They also, the results showed, expanded their horizons about career possibilities in their field. But their career intentions either inside or outside of academia, already fairly high, barely budged.
Through the data, students revealed clear distinctions about what kinds of interactions with mentors meant the most. Students who reported that mentors showed interest in their research and supported their ideas were significantly more likely to report satisfaction with their mentors than students for whom mentors demonstrated knowledge and expertise in their field, or provided constructive feedback on their academic career development.