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

这是MentorNet研究型学生获得的一小笔探索性研究助学金，目的是为了让他们了解在工程和科学领域的学术研究中，他们对导师的价值和需求的看法。智力价值：通过关注学生对指导的看法，这个项目代表了对未经检验的想法的初步工作，这些想法是工程教育研究的主流之外的新奇之处，关注学生对与他们的学业和职业规划有关的联合课程活动的看法。我们建议在这个项目上与其他研究人员组成的咨询小组合作，制定和实施一项研究，提供有助于理解学生看法的信息，并有效地向学生交流满足他们需求的机会的信息。记忆已被确定为学生学习经验的一个非常重要的组成部分，在许多情况下，对保持能力至关重要，特别是对女性和有色人种学生，但不是课程设计和课堂学习的通常重点的一部分。为了混淆理解辅导的作用和潜在有效性的努力，为了努力挖掘其对学生学习和留住的好处，这个术语经常没有在上下文中定义。因此，将指导作为一个问题的解决方案，会让教育者无法确定，为了获得留住的积极好处，指导关系的哪些方面是重要的。因此，通过这项探索性研究项目，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随学生在校时间的不同而变化，或其他因素，如性别、种族、年龄、机构类型等。

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.