Mentorship and Feedback

Strong mentoring relationships benefit from explicit expectations. Faculty and students often have different assumptions about communication, meeting frequency, deadlines, feedback, and what it means to make satisfactory progress. Those differences are much easier to address at the beginning of the experience than after a problem develops.

As students are applying to the program, faculty advisors and students should discuss:

• How often they expect to meet and what the student should prepare
• How they will communicate between meetings
• How far in advance the advisor needs to receive drafts
• What a reasonable turnaround time for feedback looks like
• How they will identify and respond to missed milestones or research setbacks
• What increasing independence should look like

Within URS, we encourage advisors to approach thesis feedback with two outcomes in mind: strengthening the scholarly product and developing the student's capacity to evaluate and improve their own work. That said, faculty advisors determine the form and substance of feedback appropriate to their discipline, their student, and the stage of the project.

Faculty advisors bring years of disciplinary experience to the thesis process, but many URS students are navigating substantial scholarly writing for the first time. Some of the most valuable mentoring occurs when students understand not only what an advisor recommends, but why.

Faculty advisors are expected to provide feedback that helps students improve both the research and the thesis, but they are not expected to rewrite or line-edit a student's work. There are times when direct instruction or correction is appropriate, particularly when accuracy, methodology, research integrity, or disciplinary standards are involved. At other times, the most useful feedback may identify a problem while leaving the student responsible for determining how to address it.

The appropriate focus of feedback will change as the thesis develops. Early feedback may center on the research question, argument, methodology, interpretation, evidence, or overall structure. Later feedback may shift toward disciplinary conventions, clarity, presentation, and refinement.

Students may not yet have the experience to recognize which comments require substantial reconsideration and which can be addressed locally. When providing extensive feedback, identifying a few priorities for the next revision can help the student direct their effort appropriately.

Allow Time for Meaningful Revision

Faculty advisors should also communicate their own availability and expected turnaround times clearly. If there are periods when you will have limited availability due to travel, research, teaching, conferences, leave, or other commitments, you should inform your student(s) early enough to plan around them. Essentially, faculty advisors and students should establish draft deadlines that reflect the advisor's availability and leave time for the student to respond meaningfully to feedback.

The URS submission deadline should not function as the student's deadline for first providing a draft to the faculty advisor. Where the project and schedule allow, students benefit from a process that includes substantive feedback, revision, and an opportunity to revisit significant concerns before final submission. The specific number and timing of drafts is appropriately determined between the student and faculty advisor.

This is also an important expectation to establish early. Faculty should not be placed in the position of having to choose between providing rushed feedback and allowing a student to miss a program deadline because the student did not account for the advisor's review time.

Faculty advisors should contact UGR staff when a problem may affect a student's ability to make meaningful progress or complete the program. This might include persistent communication problems, repeated missed research or writing milestones, a substantial change in the project, concerns about the student's individual contribution, a change in the advisor's availability, uncertainty about whether the project can result in a viable thesis, or another circumstance that makes the original plan difficult to continue.

Not every challenge necessitates UGR involvement, but our staff are here to help both faculty advisors and their students. However, we are particularly helpful when a research problem becomes a program-completion problem or when you are unsure how a change affects URS requirements.

Many URS students conduct their work within established research teams and receive day-to-day mentorship from graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, research staff, faculty collaborators, or other members of the group. The Office of Undergraduate Research recognizes these relationships as an important part of the student's research experience.

The URS program does not prescribe how faculty advisors should organize mentorship within their research groups. However, we ask that the faculty advisor retain appropriate oversight of the student's scholarly development and thesis, even when another member of the team provides substantial day-to-day guidance.

Establish the Feedback Structure

In a team environment, it can be useful for the student to understand how feedback normally moves through the group. Depending on the research environment, a graduate student or research staff member may review methods, analyses, figures, or early drafts before material reaches the faculty advisor. In another group, different members may contribute expertise at different stages. Either approach can work well.

The important point for the undergraduate is clarity: Who should I go to for what, and when should my faculty advisor be involved? Making that structure explicit helps students use the expertise of the research team appropriately without becoming uncertain about whose guidance governs the thesis.

When appropriate, faculty advisors can help students understand the basis for differing recommendations and determine what considerations should guide their decision. The goal need not be to eliminate disagreement. Learning that reasonable scholars can interpret evidence, organize an argument, or approach a problem differently is itself valuable.

Student Contributions

Team-based research also makes it especially important that the thesis accurately distinguishes the student's contribution from the work of the larger group.

The thesis does not need to present collaborative research as individual work. Instead, it should give the reader enough context to understand the larger project and enough specificity to identify what the student contributed to it.

Faculty advisors are particularly well positioned to help students make that distinction accurately. A student who has spent months immersed in a research group may no longer recognize which information is obvious only to members of that group or where the boundaries between the larger project and their individual contribution need to be explained.

A URS thesis may appropriately benefit from the expertise of many people. That support should strengthen the student's work without obscuring the student's authorship of the thesis.

Particularly in highly collaborative environments, it can be helpful to distinguish between expert feedback on the student's work and direct rewriting of the student's scholarly product. The appropriate boundary will vary by discipline and circumstance, and faculty advisors are best positioned to exercise that judgment.

For URS purposes, the central question is whether the completed thesis allows the student to demonstrate understanding and ownership of the work they are presenting.