Exploring the Evolution of the Mentoring Relationship
...in a Summer Undergraduate Research Program
The first in the series of brown bags devoted to Graduate Education Research will take place February 9, 2012. Renata A. Revelo Alonso and Michael C. Loui will present and lead a discussion on "Exploring the Evolution of the Mentoring Relationship in a Summer Undergraduate Research Program." Registration is requested.
Abstract:
The mentoring relationship is an important and crucial aspect in the academic and professional development of both mentor and protégé. Although the characteristics of positive mentoring relationships have been identified, there is little prior research in assessing the relationship between undergraduate researchers and their graduate student mentors. We present a document analysis of the reflective journals and mentoring philosophy statements of four graduate student mentors of undergraduate researchers in a summer research program. The preliminary results show that mentors and students can have mismatched expectations, and that as the mentoring relationship evolves, the roles of the mentor and student also evolve. We also present a mentoring model grounded in the data.
Speakers:
Renata Revelo Alonso. Renata is a doctoral student in Higher Education in the department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership. Her research interests include the study of underrepresented students in engineering, engagement in the engineering classroom, engineering identity, and other topics in engineering education. Her B.S. and M.S. are in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Michael C. Loui. Michael is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar. His interests include computational complexity theory, professional ethics, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He serves as Executive Editor of College Teaching, and as a member of the editorial board of Accountability in Research. He is a Carnegie Scholar and an IEEE Fellow. Professor Loui was Associate Dean of the Graduate College at Illinois from 1996 to 2000. He directed the theory of computing program at the National Science Foundation from 1990 to 1991. He earned the Ph.D. at M.I.T. in 1980.
Additional information about brown bag talks in this series is posted online.
Questions should be directed to Kathleen (Kat) Oertle at oertle@illinois.edu.