Celebrating Undergraduate Students in Research

Today I would like to reflect on the role of undergraduate students in the Frohlich Lab (and in science in general). To me, mentoring undergraduate students is a truly win-win setup in which every party involves greatly benefits.

• Choice! At most universities, you have a large pool of potential students who would like to work in a lab. This differs from a graduate program where there are only few students to choose from.
• Diversity! One of many ways how we can make sure laboratories are not monocultures of academic disciplines, gender, skin color, national origin etc.
• Chance to shape the future! Undergraduate students are hungry for knowledge, flexible, and very willing to learn and grow. What a privilege to mentor them.
• Scientific output! If smartly organized, the contribution of undergraduates can dramatically boost the scientific throughput and productivity of a research group.
• Leadership opportunity for your graduate students and postdocs! Surprising things can happen and important life lessons are being learned when you mentor your lab members to be mentors for the undergraduate students!

I have learned over the years that some mentoring strategies work better than others for making undergraduate research a joy and success. I am sure there are many different successful philosophies and approaches, but here is how we do it:

• You need a GPA of 3.5 or higher to join the Frohlich Lab. This is safeguard to make sure that student prioritize their GPA, which is perhaps the biggest determinant of which doors will be open to them in the future.
• You need to work 15 hours / week with the exception of the final exam week and university breaks. You need to clock in and out.
• During the first semester, we train you to become an independent and efficient assistant to one of the senior graduate students or postdocs. During the second semester, you keep working on the same project but start to assume larger responsibility. Finally, if you are interested, after two semesters, we design a project and mentor you that you have the chance to perform an entire study for which you carry both the intellectual and the practical responsibility. If you succeed, this is your chance to work like a graduate student and have a first-author paper. Even if you just partially succeed, you will have learned a lot and gained invaluable experience (and of course receive credit proportional to your accomplishments). We had many undergraduate students who were second authors on papers from the Frohlich Lab and had great success in their next professional trajectory (likely/hopefully) aided by the experience and accomplishments in the lab.