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Volunteered or Voluntold? The Motivations and Perceived Outcomes of Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentors of Undergraduate Researchers

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers (postgraduates) in the life sciences frequently mentor undergraduate researchers, especially at research universities. Yet there has been only modest investigation of this relationship from the postgraduate perspective. We conducted an exploratory study...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Limeri, Lisa B., Asif, Muhammad Zaka, Dolan, Erin L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society for Cell Biology 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6755213/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31008673
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-10-0219
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author Limeri, Lisa B.
Asif, Muhammad Zaka
Dolan, Erin L.
author_facet Limeri, Lisa B.
Asif, Muhammad Zaka
Dolan, Erin L.
author_sort Limeri, Lisa B.
collection PubMed
description Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers (postgraduates) in the life sciences frequently mentor undergraduate researchers, especially at research universities. Yet there has been only modest investigation of this relationship from the postgraduate perspective. We conducted an exploratory study of the experiences of 32 postgraduate mentors from diverse institutions, life sciences disciplines, and types of research to examine their motivations for mentoring and their perceived outcomes. Although some postgraduates reported feeling pressured to mentor undergraduate researchers, all expressed personal motivations, including both agentic (self-focused) and communal (community-focused) motivations. These postgraduates reported benefits and costs of mentoring that had both vocational and psychosocial elements. Given that our results indicated that even postgraduates who engaged in mentoring at the request of their faculty advisors had their own motivations, we conducted a second phase of analysis to determine the extent to which our results aligned with different theories of motivation (self-determination theory, social cognitive career theory, expectancy-value theory, social exchange theory). We end by proposing a model of postgraduate mentoring of undergraduate researchers that integrates the theories supported by our findings.
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spelling pubmed-67552132019-10-15 Volunteered or Voluntold? The Motivations and Perceived Outcomes of Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentors of Undergraduate Researchers Limeri, Lisa B. Asif, Muhammad Zaka Dolan, Erin L. CBE Life Sci Educ Article Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers (postgraduates) in the life sciences frequently mentor undergraduate researchers, especially at research universities. Yet there has been only modest investigation of this relationship from the postgraduate perspective. We conducted an exploratory study of the experiences of 32 postgraduate mentors from diverse institutions, life sciences disciplines, and types of research to examine their motivations for mentoring and their perceived outcomes. Although some postgraduates reported feeling pressured to mentor undergraduate researchers, all expressed personal motivations, including both agentic (self-focused) and communal (community-focused) motivations. These postgraduates reported benefits and costs of mentoring that had both vocational and psychosocial elements. Given that our results indicated that even postgraduates who engaged in mentoring at the request of their faculty advisors had their own motivations, we conducted a second phase of analysis to determine the extent to which our results aligned with different theories of motivation (self-determination theory, social cognitive career theory, expectancy-value theory, social exchange theory). We end by proposing a model of postgraduate mentoring of undergraduate researchers that integrates the theories supported by our findings. American Society for Cell Biology 2019 /pmc/articles/PMC6755213/ /pubmed/31008673 http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-10-0219 Text en © 2019 L. B. Limeri et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2019 The American Society for Cell Biology. “ASCB®” and “The American Society for Cell Biology®” are registered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License.
spellingShingle Article
Limeri, Lisa B.
Asif, Muhammad Zaka
Dolan, Erin L.
Volunteered or Voluntold? The Motivations and Perceived Outcomes of Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentors of Undergraduate Researchers
title Volunteered or Voluntold? The Motivations and Perceived Outcomes of Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentors of Undergraduate Researchers
title_full Volunteered or Voluntold? The Motivations and Perceived Outcomes of Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentors of Undergraduate Researchers
title_fullStr Volunteered or Voluntold? The Motivations and Perceived Outcomes of Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentors of Undergraduate Researchers
title_full_unstemmed Volunteered or Voluntold? The Motivations and Perceived Outcomes of Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentors of Undergraduate Researchers
title_short Volunteered or Voluntold? The Motivations and Perceived Outcomes of Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentors of Undergraduate Researchers
title_sort volunteered or voluntold? the motivations and perceived outcomes of graduate and postdoctoral mentors of undergraduate researchers
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6755213/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31008673
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-10-0219
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