Mentoring Undergraduates To Success & Beyond

Since we joined MIP in 2009, recruitment of talented undergraduates to help with research has been one of our priorities. Compared to graduate students or postdoctoral fellows, undergraduate students have clear advantages. First of all, there is a large pool of candidates from diverse backgrounds to choose from at the University of Michigan without going through a convoluted and lengthy admission process. Second, there is no “sink or swim'' pressure on students to meet certain milestones for graduation. However, the risks are also evident. Some students lack the discipline and grit that it takes to be a constructive force on the bench. They could drop the ball any time with short notice due to personal or family issues.

So far, we have recruited and trained more than 24 undergraduate students from different colleges and diverse backgrounds to conduct research on the bench. Most of them start in the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) with an average of 10 to 12 hours/per week in the lab. After their UROP experiences, they often apply for summer research fellowships in our department based on their qualifications and backgrounds. The fellowship gives them a coveted opportunity to

immerse themselves into research for 12 weeks as well as a stage to share their findings with peers and faculty in a 10-minute talk. We emphasize learning through trial and error. Rarely are students given lectures in the lab. All students are encouraged to pay attention to details and learn how to label samples in a very methodical and meticulous way. Using both their intellectual and technical skills to troubleshoot protocols or instrumentation is a daily occurrence in the lab.

One of our former students, Gogol Guha, started out with just a bit of curiosity about research. After four years of bench experience and four publications, he moved to Adolphe Merkle Institute in Switzerland to pursue his Ph.D. in 2015. Lo and behold, he made quite a splash with a first co-authorship in Nature in 2018, demonstrating how to generate electricity by mimicking electric eels. His scientific finding had become a quiz question on the show Jeopardy. During his virtual thesis defense in Switzerland, I could not help noticing the flashes of ingenuity he had displayed and the tricks he had learned in our lab.

Recruitment and retainment of undergraduates is always tricky. It is critical to know ahead of time what qualities and expectations you have of the prospective students. We always tell students during interviews that we prefer longdistance runners who can stick around through their fouryear college journey. Normally, it takes about two years of bench experience for students to master techniques and develop a deep understanding of experimental design before they can be trusted with critical reagents and samples on a regular basis. The fruit of labor tends to materialize in junior and senior years when students start to amass publications, coinciding with their applications to graduate school or professional school. Thus, it really takes a lot of time and patience to invest in students and guide them through different stages of development. In general, our anecdotal evidence has pointed us towards students who have gone through rigorous training in playing musical instruments or sports, or who have extensive employment in professional settings before college.

Each student is unique in their own way. How to handle each student’s temperament can be challenging. As mentors, we have to be flexible and adaptive enough to attend to their different needs through college life. We normally allow freshmen extra time to adjust to the hours in the lab before they learn how to balance lab research and course work in the classroom. We always try to have a mix group of undergrads of staggered years, trying to create a collegial atmosphere that helps new students get comfortable in their own skin in the lab. For more senior students, doing bench work in the lab provides an oasis to fully engross themselves in tasks at hand without the distractions of classes or exams. For more junior students, socializing with those who are more experienced in the lab provides easy access to well-tested advice and information sources.

Through the years, personal relationships also have been cultivated so that students who have gone to graduate school or professional school have been keen to make a short video to share their lab experiences. Invariably, they would talk about how crucial their scientific training and publication records were to the success of their applications and how their bench experiences helped to break ice during formal interviews. Those video testimonials all have turned out to be our most effective recruitment tools during interviews with new students.

Looking back, witnessing the transformation of undergraduates into fledgling scientists with accomplishments has been one of the most gratifying aspects of our academic lives at the University of Michigan. For those students who have been able to thrive on the bench, research experience in the lab is icing on the cake in terms of payback on their college education and helping build future careers.

Physiology Summer Research Fellows Fund Your gift will support undergraduate students that are interested in research in physiology and/or biomedical sciences. This fund provides financial support to summer research fellows, their research and the summer program activities. Donate online at http://victors.us/mipsummer