Summer 2025

Mentoring is a cornerstone of undergraduate research. For this issue, we invited undergraduate research (UR) professionals to share their perspectives, insights, and best practices on mentorship across diverse academic settings, and they delivered. This collection shows mentoring across all stages and phases.

In this, my last issue as associate and issue editor for Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research (SPUR), Editor-in-Chief Patricia Mabrouk offered me the opportunity to write the editorial. It is fitting that the issue focuses on mentoring, and I also got to work with a friend and mentor on this issue. I have written a longer piece in a similar vein, entitled “Working Smarter by Engaging Students in Political Science Research” (Reilly 2023). Certainly, the activities described in this editorial reflect my own career path and how I arrived at my service to SPUR.

This commentary encourages mentors to incorporate two key practices into undergraduate research and creative inquiry: open science and public-facing scholarship. Open science promotes transparency and accessibility in research, and public scholarship focuses on sharing academic work beyond traditional academic audiences. To support faculty as they guide students through these practices, we introduce the design, analysis, perform, action (DAPA) framework, a simple decision-making tool. This approach helps students take an active role in their research experiences. We provide two examples from liberal arts undergraduate institutions to illustrate how faculty have used the model in practice. The commentary ends with four practical lessons for mentors, highlighting the importance of intentionality and collaboration with students.

Mentorship is pivotal in the academic and career trajectories of racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students, particularly within undergraduate research experiences (UREs). This phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of REM community college students who participated in UREs and later transferred to four-year institutions. Guided by the community cultural wealth framework, semi-structured interviews examined how mentorship and undergraduate research influence students’ persistence and success in STEM. Findings highlighted the importance of social support from research mentors, peers, and program staff, and the reinforcing impact of diverse research environments. By amplifying student voices, this study provided insights into best practices for mentorship in UREs, with implications for fostering inclusive and equitable pathways for REM students in STEM.

This study investigates the impact of undergraduate research at a single university on both student and faculty mentor skill development and retention. Survey methodology was used to determine students’ and mentors’ self-perception of their own skills as researchers and mentors, respectively, both before and after participation in undergraduate research. Moreover, students and mentors were also asked to assess each other’s skill development as mentors and student researchers, respectively. This dual assessment demonstrated gains in self-perception of research and mentorship skills among students and faculty, who also confirmed these gains in their counterparts. Importantly, this study documents increases in student retention and graduation rates and also increased faculty retention at the university for faculty who serve as undergraduate research mentors.

The purpose of this study was to describe and report on a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) implemented as a multi-institutional virtual program using in-service teachers as mentors to support undergraduate students’ research process. Ninety-eight students enrolled in four undergraduate social science courses across three institutions within one state public university system, located in the Southeast region of the United States, were organized into ten cross-institutional groups consisting often students with one or two teacher-mentors, who were alums of the teacher education program. The mentoring relationships functioned to provide social-emotional support, career and professional development, and role modeling. The teacher-mentors had an impact developing undergraduate students’ global competencies, research skills, and their identity as researchers and future professionals.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation and the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholar Development recently created the Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers (MUR) Institute for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The MUR Institute supports the development of the next generation of research mentors through cross-disciplinary generative learning exercises and novel content delivery, culminating in the development of scaffolded mentoring plans for participants’ research. To assess MUR’s efficacy, pre- and postsurveys were administered to multiple cohorts of participants; results have shown increases in participants’ knowledge and perceived ability to be an effective and inclusive mentor as a result of MUR participation. This article elaborates upon MUR’s curriculum and assessments to contribute the institute’s novel approach to the growing literature on undergraduate research mentor training.

Designing and Implementing a Successful Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Program is a recent addition to the Routledge Undergraduate Research Series. The purpose of this book is not to explore different forms of undergraduate research engagement. Instead, it is a practical and comprehensive resource for higher education faculty and administrators seeking to initiate or grow a formal program office that supports all undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity (URSCA).