UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH GROUP DYNAMICS: AN EFFECTIVE SYSTEM TO INVOLVE STUDENTS WITH LITTLE SCIENCE BACKGROUND IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Undergraduate research can seem to many as inaccessible to students not deemed ready or ‘gifted' in the sciences. In research at the undergraduate level, it appears that some hold the postulate that a student engaging in this activity must be somehow better prepared than most students, or that it takes only a very special individual to be successful. In my experience, these ideas are not true. Students that wish to perform research need only the desire to do so. It is up to us as faculty mentors to provide the means and guidance to students where “authentic” research can be achieved by any student, not just the ‘brainy' or science majors. I have found that a very effective way to involve even the most novice of students in meaningful research projects is to include them in a research group dynamic that I have instituted in my laboratory. The group is composed completely of undergraduate students, whose members represent students at each stage of undergraduate career. The group is self-sustaining, in the model of groups found at research institutions. Researchers are performing independent research, but with similar tools and skill sets so that members learn from each other as much as they learn from me as project supervisor. The group membership varies by semester (4 to 8) as members graduate or move on. Typically, the seniors have done some research as juniors and/or as early researchers, and act as assistants to me as peer mentors to the other undergraduates, and as lab managers that keep the lab running. Juniors were typically early researchers as well, and will take over as lab managers once the seniors leave the group. In effect, juniors are ‘second in command' to the seniors. In short, each researcher learns from the others in the group in some way. Inserting into this group students with little science background is surprisingly simple as long as the mentor is careful to choose wisely the research projects for these participants. One must be careful to choose limits, and to ‘team-up' these researchers with more experienced undergraduates from which to learn all aspects of performing science. This inclusion of ‘novices' can be very rewarding, and has proven to be effective at recruiting majors as well as a successful way of getting pre- and in-service science teachers involved in real research.