Target audience
The second edition of the Entering Research curriculum includes materials specifically designed for undergraduate and graduate student mentees.
Group size
All activities are designed for a small cohort (12-15 trainees), but can be scaled up for use with larger groups if additional time is allowed and multiple facilitators are available.
Implementation considerations
There are many questions to consider when planning how you will implement Entering Research at your institution. Training may be offered for course credit, as a series of workshops, or as a stand-alone workshop covering only a few topics. The questions below are meant to help you consider some of the factors that arise when implementing. Some of these questions may apply to you and some will not.
Participant considerations:
- Are all of your trainees at the same stage in their training?
- Are all of your trainees conducting research in the same disciplinary area (e.g., biology)?
- How will you recruit trainees into your course/seminar or will it be a required component of your research training program?
Training location considerations:
- What size classroom do you need?
- Do you need a specific set up? (e.g., active learning classroom, access to a projector, etc.)
Institutional considerations:
- How are undergraduate and graduate research coordinated at your institution? For example, is there a central office for undergraduate research?
- Do you need to get institutional approval to implement your class? (e.g., curriculum committee approval)
- How do you get your course listed where students can register?
- Do you need to recruit a co-facilitator?
- How will this course or workshop series be integrated into the existing curriculum and major/degree requirements?
- What are the evaluation procedures in place at your institution? Is it possible to integrate additional evaluation/assessment questions into any existing course evaluations?
Create a custom Entering Research training
Detailed instructions about how to build a custom curriculum for your course or program using the backward design process are outlined in the Entering Research book and in the Facilitator Workshop: Learn to Implement Mentee Training offered through CIMER. In general, use the Entering Research conceptual framework’s seven areas of trainee development in the three step process outlined below to align your learning objectives, activities, and assessments.
Step 1 – Identify what you want your trainees to learn and the constraints and opportunities afforded by your program or course implementation.
Step 2 – Select the materials you will use to support your trainees to achieve the learning objectives.
Step 3 – Select the instruments you will use to assess whether your trainees have achieved the learning objectives.
The power of backward design is in the alignment of learning objectives, activities, and assessments, which ensures that everything in the learning experience supports achievement of the learning objectives.
Sample curricula
The complete curricula outlined below can be downloaded from the CIMER website.
Implementation Description: In this 10-week summer research program students are engaging in full time research (approximately 40 hours/week). Professional development sessions are offered for 90 minutes each week.
Week | Topic & Entering Research Activities |
1 | Program Orientation & Meeting Your Mentor
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2 | Defining Your Research Project
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3 | Documenting Your Research and Persistence in Research
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4 | Presenting Your Research Project
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5 | Ethics in Research
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6 | Visiting Peer Research Groups
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7 | Graduate School 101/ Equity and Inclusion in STEM
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8 | Writing Your Final Paper
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9 | Preparing your Final Presentation/Exploring Research Careers
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10 | Final Symposium
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Implementation Description: This 1 credit seminar course, which meets for 50 minutes each week, is designed for undergraduate students with 0-1 semesters of prior research experience. The students are expected to have found a research mentor prior to the beginning of the semester. In addition to registering for this 1 credit seminar, students simultaneously enroll in 1-3 credits of independent study with their research mentor, equivalent to 4-12 hours of research per week.
Week | Topic & Entering Research Activities |
1 | Introduction to Entering Research and Research Experience Expectations
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2 | Navigating the Mentoring Relationship
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3 | Aligning Mentor-Trainee Expectations
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4 | Research Group Focus
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5 | Documenting Your Research & Persistence in Research
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6 | Reading Scientific Literature
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7 | Research Self-Efficacy
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8 | Research Posters
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9 | Communicating Research
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10 | Research Ethics
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11 | Visiting Peer Research Groups
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12 | Developing a Professional Development Plan
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13 | Poster Peer Review and Presentations
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14 | Science and Society
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15 | Poster Session
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Implementation Description: This seminar course was designed for undergraduate students with 2+ semesters of prior research experience. The students are expected to have a research mentor prior to the beginning of the semester. Students enroll in 1-3 credits of independent study equivalent to 4-12 hours of research per week.
Week | Topic & Entering Research Activities |
1 | Introduction to Entering Research and Research Experience Expectations
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2 | Research Group Focus
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3 | Aligning Mentor and Trainee Expectations
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4 | Efficient Research Article Reading
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5 | Research Ethics
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6 | Diversity in STEM
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7 | Why Diversity Matters
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8 | Coping Efficacy
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9 | Mini-Grant Proposal and Mentor Check-In
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10 | Research Group Funding
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11 | Research Careers: The Informational Interview
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12 | Letter of Recommendation
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13 | Peer Review of Mini-Grant Proposal
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14 | Personal Statements
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15 | Networking
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Implementation Description: This seminar course was designed for entering graduate students. This course is designed to be taken during the first semester while students are engaging in rotations. However, the activities are also beneficial for direct admit students.
Week | Topic & Entering Research Activities |
1 | Course Introduction and Research Experience Expectations
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2 | Finding Potential Research Rotation Groups and Mentors
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3 | Aligning Expectations
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4 | Searching Online Databases
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5 | Importance of Reading in Graduate School
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6 | Article Organization, Comprehension & Critique
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7 | Writing in Science
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8 | Data Rigor & Reproducibility
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9 | Research Ethics
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10 | The Power of Social Persuasion
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11 | Coping Efficacy
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12 | Diversity in STEM
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13 | Challenges Facing Diverse Teams
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14 | Networking
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15 | Developing a Curriculum Vitae
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