SGER: Students' Perceptions of Value and Need for Mentors As They Progress Through Academic Studies in Engineering and Science

这是一项探索性研究小额赠款，用于资助MentorNet研究学生在工程和科学学术研究中对导师的价值和需求的看法。智力价值：在关注学生对指导的看法方面，该项目代表了对未经测试的想法的初步工作，这些想法在工程教育研究的主流之外是新颖的，专注于学生对与其学术研究和职业规划相关的课外活动的看法。我们建议与其他研究人员组成的咨询小组合作，制定并实施一项研究，该研究将提供有用的信息，既可以了解学生的看法，又可以有效地与学生沟通，了解他们可以获得的满足他们需求的机会。导师制被认为是学生学习经历的一个非常重要的组成部分，在许多情况下，对于保留来说是必不可少的，特别是对女性和有色人种的学生来说，但它不是课程设计和课堂学习的通常重点。为了混淆理解指导的作用和潜在有效性的努力，为了挖掘其对学生学习和保留的好处，这个术语经常在上下文中未定义。因此，将指导作为一个问题的解决方案，会让教育者不确定，为了获得保留的积极好处，师徒关系的哪些方面是重要的复制。因此，通过这个探索性研究项目，我们将更多地了解学生对导师的价值和需求的看法，特别是这些看法如何根据学生在学校的年级或其他因素（如性别、种族、年龄、机构类型等）而变化。

This is a Small Grant for Exploratory Research award to MentorNet research students' perceptions of the value and need for mentors as they progress through their academic studies in engineering and science. Intellectual Merit: In focusing on student perceptions about mentoring, this project represents preliminary work on untested ideas that are novel in being outside the mainstream of research in engineering education in focusing on student perceptions of a co-curricular activity related to their academic studies and career plans. We propose to work with an advisory group of other researchers on this project to shape and implement a study which will provide information useful for both understanding student perceptions and communicating to students effectively information about opportunities available to them to meet their needs.Mentoring has been identified as a very important component of students' learning experiences, and in many cases, essential to retention, particularly for women and students of color, but is not part of the usual focus of curricular design, and classroom learning. To confound efforts to understand the role and potential effectiveness of mentoring, in an effort to tap into its benefits to student learning and retention, the term is frequently left undefined in context. So to prescribe mentoring as a solution for a problem leaves educators uncertain about what aspects of a mentoring relationship are important to replicate in order to gain its positive benefits for retention. Thus, through this exploratory research project, we will to learn more about students' perceptions of the value and need for mentors, and particularly how these perceptions might vary depending upon the student's year in school, or other factors such as gender, ethnicity, age, type of institution, etc.