Summary:
Undergraduate research opportunities help foster a science identity and increase retention in STEM majors and transition into the STEM workforce. Moreover, these opportunities have stronger results for underrepresented minority students in STEM.…
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Undergraduate research opportunities help foster a science identity and increase retention in STEM majors and transition into the STEM workforce. Moreover, these opportunities have stronger results for underrepresented minority students in STEM. However, while these opportunities are advertised and shared among faculty and students, there is less support for students to independently identify them, have the confidence to pursue them, and generate competitive applications. I propose using a professional development approach to teach students how to find and apply for undergraduate summer research experiences. In this poster, I overview a module developed to introduce undergraduate students to the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. I then use this module to establish a framework for a Faculty Mentoring Network (FMN). This network will support faculty wanting to adapt and create modules to teach professional development skills to apply to summer undergraduate research programs successfully. To narrow the scope of our FMN, we will focus on NSF REU programs.