Guidance on Undergrads: Advice for Mentoring

Serina Taluja 

For many graduate students, there comes a time during your training where you have to decide - are YOU ready to train other people?

This may come in the form of an undergraduate reaching out to your PI interested in joining the group, or if you gain more projects than you think you can take on alone and are looking for help, or if you’re like me and end up joining the Aggie Research Program to gain experience managing a team of people. Whatever your method, at some point you might be looking at taking an undergrad under your wing and teaching them about your area of research as you, yourself, are also learning about it! I still remember the first undergrad I worked with, her name was Brianna, and when I found out she was going to be helping me with my favorite part of my project at the time - my first two thoughts were “Oh I’m so glad she gets to work with me on the part I’m so passionate about!” and “Wait, am I qualified to train an undergrad?! I’ve only been in my lab for a semester, am I
really ready for this?”. So, if you’re looking at taking on your first undergrad (or group of undergrads), here’s some advice I wish I had known when I first started mentoring during my second semester of grad school.


You don’t have to know everything to be an effective teacher.

I used to get so discouraged anytime I couldn’t answer a question Brianna asked about our area of research. I thought that if I couldn’t answer all of her questions correctly and confidently that somehow, that meant I wasn’t qualified to be training her. But that wasn’t true - one day I decided anytime she asked a question I couldn’t answer I would look it up on the spot so we could have a conversation about it, and that opened doors to lots of other interesting conversations that we both got to learn from! So don’t be upset if you don’t know it all - you can’t! And that highlights one of the many perks of training undergraduates while you’re in grad school - a lot of those questions that you can’t answer are coming from an entirely fresh perspective! You don’t know how to answer the question because you’ve never looked at a concept or problem in that way, and finding an answer in collaboration with your trainees gives you both an opportunity to explore that new path as it relates to your research.

Your undergrads are not you.

This is a double-sided statement, because on one hand, your undergrads probably won’t work as quickly as you do, or they might not catch on to a concept as quickly as you do, and this is simply because often, you’ll have been in your area of research much longer than they have been. With that experience comes a comfort which can make things move a lot quicker, but you have to remember that you were inexperienced once too, and someone was patient with you while you learned. Now you need to be patient with them while they learn!

Secondly, your undergrads might be working with you on your project, but that doesn’t mean their overall ambitions will be the same (or even similar!) to your own. I have one undergrad working with me now who is insanely good at molecular biology, and understands the concepts behind what we’re doing quickly and effectively - but they are not in a science-heavy major, and realistically probably won’t go on to grad school despite the fact that they could probably excel in it! But that’s okay - I want them to receive the experience they need and want to be able to pursue the career that makes THEM excited, whatever that may be!

Make sure you’re accessible to them as a mentor (outside of the research)

In addition to the mentorship you’re providing them with during the time they are working with you on the project, your undergrads will probably look up to you in terms of career development too - so try to make sure you’re open to having those conversations with them. Even if you’re not an expert in what they are interested in pursuing specifically, if you are open to chatting with them about what they want to do, that can really help guide them in the right direction in terms of career development.