57: How to Secure a Faculty Mentor

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Hello, everyone. I am trying something new. Today I am recording myself via zoom, and I am including a video along with it. I also turned on the transcription option on Zoom, so that hopefully some of you who will access my podcasts via the video- I'm going to post it on YouTube- you can see the transcription, in an effort to make my podcast more accessible.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

This is an idea that was proposed by my partner. He said, why don't you post your podcasts on YouTube? And I tell him, well, I don't know. I don't know about recording myself. I don't know how I feel about that, and then I have to get dressed up. Then I thought about it- that's just my own discomfort. But it's actually a really great idea in terms of making the podcasts more accessible, especially because Zoom does offer that option of the live transcription. So I'm going to go ahead and go along with it, test it out. Hopefully it works.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

For today, what I wanted to talk about is how to secure a faculty mentor. The reason I'm bringing that up today is because it's come up a lot for students on our campus. Right now, students on our campus- I'm at University of California, Santa Barbara- they are applying for summer research programs, and a lot of the summer research programs require that you have a faculty mentor lined up to work with in the summer.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So we have a lot of highly ambitious students who want to do research, who are really excited, but then they may be freshmen and sophomores. They've never worked with a faculty mentor before. This becomes a big hurdle like, how do I even secure a mentor? Who do I go to? Who do I talk to? Help! I'm just going to give you some advice. A lot of it's going to be tailored to the UC system, my experience at UCSB, at UCLA. But hopefully some of it will also reflect back on your institution and will be helpful for you.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So how do you secure a faculty mentor? Like I mentioned earlier, there are a couple of occasions where you might need a faculty mentor if you are a student at a four year institution. You might need a faculty mentor if you're applying to a summer research program, like I mentioned earlier. You might need a faculty mentor if you're applying to a research fellowship program like McNair and Mellon Mays, or anything of the like - MARC. There are a wide range of programs that are one to two year fellowship programs.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

You might need a faculty mentor if you are applying for departmental honors. I know that that's definitely something that exists across the UC system. If you want to work on a senior thesis and get departmental honors credit for it through your major, you will need a faculty mentor for that. Or just in general, you want to gain research experience. You want to become a research assistant. You want to take an independent study or independent research course with someone, you need someone to work under.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

How do you figure out who to work with? One way that students do it is they go based off who they know. They look at their transcripts and the classes that they've taken in their major, assuming that they want to continue to do research in their field, and they think about okay, what professors have I taken? Who seemed like a great professor? Whose work sounded very interesting? Okay, reach out to them. Schedule a meeting with them. Talk to them about my research interests, and see if they are open to taking any undergraduate students for research.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

The next step is -again, assuming that you're doing research in your major- you look at the departmental website. This also applies if you're interested in interdisciplinary research. If your major is one thing- like this happens a lot in Global Studies. Our Global Studies students have a wide range of interests. Some of them end up working with professors in the History department. Some of them will end up working with professors in Black Studies. Some of them end up working with professors in Chicanx Studies, in Economics.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

It's just a wide range. Their interests in Global Studies span across multiple fields. If that's the case, I say don't just stick to your major. Actually think about your research interests, and what majors have professors covering fields in those interests. Definitely check out departmental websites to see what professors are available, what work are they doing, and whose work sounds interesting to me.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

It doesn't have to be a perfect fit. That's the one thing I want to kind of echo and say over and over again. For Undergraduate Research, you want to gain experience. It doesn't have to be the project that you've always wanted to work on. That's something that you could reserve for graduate school. For now, it's getting your in. It's getting that experience, so that you can then work your way up to doing something more closely aligned with what you want to do.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

It's okay to become a research assistant. It's okay to work on someone else's project for now so that, again, you gain the experience and can then apply it to the more competitive programs. Go ahead and look into what professors do you know, or whose courses you've taken, or what professors are available in the departmental websites.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Are there any databases on your campus? On our campus, we have some something called the Faculty Research Apprenticeship program. It's called the FRAP database. Professors across campus who know that they want to work with a student can list their area of interest, the project that they work on, and what kind of student they want or need. Do they have to have any qualifications or any experience to apply to work with them? They put that on the database, and students can check the database based on their major, based on the subject area, and then reach out to the professor, apply and conduct research that way.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So are there any databases? Is there an Undergraduate Research Center? Is there something similar, some sort of research resource location on campus where you can then contact them to ask if there are any professors who are taking students in areas that you're interested in? Similarly, you could always reach out to an undergraduate advisor. In your major, you can see if the undergraduate advisor knows any professors who are looking to take undergraduate students for research assistantships.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Keep in mind that research assistantships are far more common in STEM fields than they are in the humanities and social sciences, and even more common in the social sciences than in the humanities. In the humanities fields, research tends to be very independent. Everybody comes up with their own project, and their own topic. Usually when you're coming up with your own project, it's the faculty mentor who's helping guide you in developing that project. But it is your own idea, something you come up with.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Whereas in certain social science fields, and definitely in STEM fields, it's more common to be working under a professor who has their larger project, and you're assisting them on that larger project. Sometimes you get an opportunity to come up with your own sub topic or sub research question within the larger project, and then that's the thing that you contribute and that's the thing that you can publish. But it's far more common in quantitative social sciences, or in certain collaborative social science fields and STEM fields, to be doing that kind of work where you're assisting someone else on their project. That might not be a perfect fit in terms of what you want to do right now with your research.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So, like I said, what professors have you taken? Check out departmental websites. Check out any databases, research centers, research resources, anything that's available on your campus. Go based off your interests, and it doesn't have to be specific. It could be your general, broad interests. Right now, the emphasis is on you obtaining research skills, because it's those research skills that are going to make you more competitive for the fellowship programs, and then ultimately make you more competitive for graduate school, if that's what you want to do down the line.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Then let's say you've located, checked out all the spaces, and you've identified a couple of people. What do you do next? The next thing that you should do is contact them and schedule a meeting with these individuals. And I recommend contacting at least three people and seeing where that goes. Let's say one of them doesn't get back to you, or none of them get back to you. So you contact three people, and you just don't hear from them.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

It is completely okay to send a follow up email one week later. So it's been seven days, maybe your email just got lost in the shuffle of emails. Go ahead and send them a reminder email. When you send them a reminder email, you forward the older email and say, you know, this is just a gentle reminder. I want to let you know I'm very much interested in working with you on research. I'm looking into gaining research skills and would be more than willing to do what I need to make sure that I'm a qualified candidate. Whatever it is that you need to say to schedule a meeting with them, to express your interest, and tell them that you want to work with them on research. So schedule a meeting. Follow up after a week. Hopefully after that someone will get back to you.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Then you meet with them. Tell them what your research interests are. Tell them if your long term goal is to go to graduate school, or to have a research career. You can mention that. And then see if they're taking any students and in what capacity you can help them or they can help you. If you're interested in becoming a research assistant, if you're interested in taking an independent study course with them, figure out in what capacity you could get started on research. Maybe they already have a lab, and they have funding to pay you to be a research assistant. That would be great.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

Let's say in an ideal world, you reach out to three professors. All three of them want to meet with you. All three of them seem really great, and they are all enthusiastic and willing to take you on as their mentee. What do you do then? That's a good problem to have, but it is a problem that comes up. If three people or more want to work with you, and all of a sudden you have to turn them down- yes, that is an awkward experience to have. And yes, it does happen sometimes.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

At the end of the day, I would say go over your options and figure out which one is the best fit for you. And the fit, part of it is a very personal thing. It should be a combination of both the type of rapport that you develop, or that you get a sense of with that individual, and also the research topic. Definitely think about whose research topic is the most closely aligned with what I want to do, what I envision doing long term. And also who do I get along with the best? Who has the mentoring style that I think would work best with mine?

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

If you like hands on mentoring, who seems like they would be more hands on? You can ask them this when you meet with them. You can ask them, what is your mentoring style? What is your approach to mentoring and teaching? What's your philosophy? Then if they're hands on, if their hands off, depending on what you prefer, then you can go with that.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I'd definitely say don't underestimate kindness. If they seem like they will be kind, like they will advocate for you, like they will help you, make time for you. That's not a bad thing to prioritize. So it's combination of -again, like I said- the rapport and the research fit. Then you follow up.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

And to the other folks, you're gonna have to say, just kidding. Not just kidding, but you can say thank you so much for your time. I greatly appreciated meeting with you. I learned so much about X, Y and Z. Unfortunately, at this time, it looks like I will be working with another professor in X department, which is a closer fit to what I wanted to do, but I hope that we can continue to remain in communication. Please let me know if there any other resources you'd like to share with me. I look forward to being in touch with you in the future.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

You want to remain collegial, even remain in touch with them. Sometimes students will have more than one faculty mentor. They may have two. They have one primary person that they meet every week, every other week. They might have a secondary person that they meet once a month. That person's more informal, but they still develop that relationship, which is great because then that person can be another letter writer for when you apply to grad school. When you apply for grad school, you're going to need at least three letters of recommendation.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

So it's nice to to keep these lines of communication open, to keep these relationships strong. That way, again, it's not a bad thing to have more than one mentor, even if one or two of them are more informal. Then you've got that one person who is the the formal faculty mentor who's going to be on file when you take the research assistantship credits, when you apply for the fellowships and so on.

Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu

I hope that that helps you with securing a mentor. Definitely the first part is identifying who might be a good fit. The next part is reaching out to them. The third step is scheduling a meeting with them. After you meet with them, the last step is figuring out who you're ultimately going to work with. And then setting up an action plan, or coming up with a meeting where you talk about expectations, and how you're going to move forward, and what goals you're going to try to meet when you get started working with them. I hope that you found this useful and I will definitely talk to you all next time. That's it for today. Thank you for listening.