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The Role of Mentoring in a Dual-Mentored Scalable CS Research Program

Authors:

Christine Alvarado,

Madeline TjoaAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '21: Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Pages 945 - 951

https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432364

Published: 05 March 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Despite the documented importance of mentoring in undergraduate research, few studies examine how students---especially early undergraduates in computing---perceive their relationships with their mentors. We present a qualitative thematic analysis of the mentoring practices used in an inclusive, structured computer science research program targeting second-year undergraduates across two large public research universities in the United States. Uniquely in this program, students had two mentoring sources: a technical mentor for each research group and a graduate student mentor common to all groups. We analyzed reflections on mentoring from 64 undergraduate researchers at two points in the program. We compared the roles of the two mentors, characterized students' perceptions of both successful and unsuccessful mentors, and examined how mentoring relationships evolved. Generally, students valued mentors who provided project guidance or technical support and who were perceived to be friendly. We found that the roles of the two mentors were complementary in sometimes surprising ways. Overall, our analysis confirms prior work on undergraduate research mentoring, and provides new insights into the unique benefits of a dual-mentoring approach and how to best support early undergraduate computing researchers.

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Cited By

Sunshine JVelez-Ginorio J(2024)Research Experiences for Undergraduates Are Necessary for an Equitable Research CommunityCommunications of the ACM10.1145/3665517Online publication date: 31-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3665517
Torres-Mendoza DKheirinejad SAjmal MChembu APalea DWhitehead JLee D(2024)Evaluating Exploratory Reading Groups for Supporting Undergraduate Research Pipelines in ComputingProceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3632620.3671104(389-405)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632620.3671104
Callaghan SGonsiorowski EFilinger WZhukov I(2024)Developing a Successful HPC Mentoring Program at the IHPCSSPractice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2024: Human Powered Computing10.1145/3626203.3670519(1-9)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626203.3670519

Index Terms

The Role of Mentoring in a Dual-Mentored Scalable CS Research Program
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs

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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '21: Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 2021

1454 pages

ISBN:9781450380621

DOI:10.1145/3408877

General Chairs:
Mark Sherriff
University of Virginia, USA
,
Laurence D. Merkle
Air Force Institute of Technology, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Pamela Cutter
Kalamazoo College, USA
,
Alvaro Monge
California State University, Long Beach, USA
,
Judithe Sheard
Monash University, Australia

Copyright © 2021 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Published: 05 March 2021

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March 13 - 20, 2021

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Cited By

Sunshine JVelez-Ginorio J(2024)Research Experiences for Undergraduates Are Necessary for an Equitable Research CommunityCommunications of the ACM10.1145/3665517Online publication date: 31-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3665517
Torres-Mendoza DKheirinejad SAjmal MChembu APalea DWhitehead JLee D(2024)Evaluating Exploratory Reading Groups for Supporting Undergraduate Research Pipelines in ComputingProceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3632620.3671104(389-405)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632620.3671104
Callaghan SGonsiorowski EFilinger WZhukov I(2024)Developing a Successful HPC Mentoring Program at the IHPCSSPractice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2024: Human Powered Computing10.1145/3626203.3670519(1-9)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626203.3670519

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