In these challenging times, the Chemistry Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research realizes that many of you may be searching for ways to support undergraduate research students. The following are some suggestions.
1/n
1/n
Literature searching: use this time to make sure that your database is current. If you don’t yet use an electronic program to manage your citations, there are several that are free. 2/n
Literature review: If you have students you are developing, consider identifying a narrow topic and leverage their interest in researching this area and writing a literature review. 3/n
Write up work completed or near completion: work with your students to write the manuscript for the projects that are nearing completion. If the work isn’t quite done, writing now can really help clarify the experiments that need to be finished. 4/n
Role reversal: the PI (or grad students, depending on where you are) conducts wrap-up experiments suggested by students in discussion with PIs as students contribute to initial manuscript drafts. 5/n
Develop ideas for a proposal: Work with your students to read papers that might help you develop new ideas. Have students do the literature research and write summaries of paper for you to cite or have them write paragraphs or parts of the proposal. 6/n
Write standard operating procedures for each of your common lab procedures. This can be important for transmitting information from student to student and can also help with safety. 7/n
Develop a lab wiki or other web-based resource for lab training and other helpful documents. 8/n
Have students work together to write an “Intro to the Research Lab” document that welcomes new students and gets them up to speed on your work. 9/n
Write materials that can help recruit prospective students to the College and to the research lab. These could be summaries of their work, reflections about the importance of research, or why doing research at your institution has been great. 10/n
Have students reflect on their development as a scientist and how participating in research has helped with their growth and development. With their permission, these documents could be helpful to your Communications and Advancement offices. 11/n
Ask students to update resumes with information about their undergraduate research projects and the skills they have developed. 11/n
Update and freshen web sites or other research materials used to recruit students for research participation. 12/n
Envision and/or develop an embedded undergraduate research course for future deployment in collaboration with your students. They may have excellent ideas about how to make this workable from a student perspective. 13/n
Engage your students in creating short videos providing a lightning-talk style overview of their research for various audiences. You could use these on your website, develop a YouTube channel, and/or develop a @JoVEJournal “paper” or “educational resource.” 14/n
We want to encourage you to approach this moment with kindness and grace. Different students need different support, especially in these uncertain times. Thank you for your work with your students; you are valued. 15/15 #proflife #chemtwitter
