Join the Center for Undergraduate Research and Engagement (CURE) and the Office of the Provost for a highly interactive workshop designed to equip faculty mentors with effective, new, immediately applicable techniques for empowering their undergraduate students to become more centered, self-reliant, and successful researchers. Through a series of hands-on exercises, faculty participants will enhance their repertoire of skills to help students develop projects tuned to their fundamental interests, circumstances, and needs.
Bringing out Their Best: A Workshop on Research Skills and Mentorship
Friday, January 31, 2025
10:00 am to Noon (Virtual)
Zoom link will be sent prior to session; please register by Jan. 23
My Track RSVP Link (up to 30 Participants)
About the Workshop
Dr. Thomas S. Mullaney and Dr. Christopher Rea, authors of Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project That Matters to You (and the World) (Chicago, 2022), will draw on the exercises in their best-selling book to focus on common scenarios faced by undergraduate student researchers who:
- Don’t see themselves as researchers
- Have difficulty choosing a research topic
- Know their topic, but are unsure how to turn it into a research project
- Have trouble finding a mentor
- Feel intimidated by or unqualified to do research
- Worry that they are asking the wrong questions about their research topic
- Have plenty of good ideas, but aren’t sure which one to commit to
- Want to learn new ways to think about how to do research.
Target outcomes include
- Helping undergraduate student researchers to realize their full potential and promise by means of a specific, feasible, and significant project
- Reducing student disengagement, burnout, and attrition
- Strengthening collegial networks for sharing mentoring best practices
- Fostering a sense of inclusion and belonging in a learning community
Workshop participants will receive a paperback copy of Where Research Begins and instructor and student access to “Where Research Begins” online curricular materials through June 30, 2025.
Thomas Mullaney is Professor of History at Stanford University, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of Stanford’s highest award for excellence in teaching, the Gores Award.
Christopher Rea is Professor of Asian Studies and former Director of the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia. He earned a BA from Dartmouth College and a PhD from Columbia University and has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University and at universities in Taiwan and Australia.