Achievement

Trainees are successfully mentoring and tutoring undergraduates through a variety of mechanisms. We initially developed a mentoring component to connect graduate students with undergraduates from underrepresented groups; however, success in connecting graduate students with undergraduates was limited because we had difficulty identifying these undergraduates and attracting them to meet with us. This year, we tried a new tactic in which we brought the graduate students to the undergraduates. Now, graduate students spend on average five hours per week interacting with undergraduates in a variety of settings. This interaction occurs in student learning centers, where undergraduate students receive free tutoring by IGERT students, in formal classroom settings, and in informal settings, such as undergraduate student lounges. Individual graduate students are paired one-on-one with faculty, who identify the undergraduates and projects that would benefit from graduate student mentoring.