One of the most fun and gratifying aspects of being a University lecturer is to supervise undergraduate students in their research projects. As lecturers, we have the privilege to often be the first to introduce students to research. We get to see their excitement when things work out. We get to witness their amazing improvements, where within a few months they go from having absolutely no clue to running experiments on their own.

 

Interacting with undergraduate students has always given me great joy and hence I have often wondered why any Professor would delegate this task to graduate students, postdocs or research assistants. Yet, many principal investigators do. I even heard one professor say once that he does not actually know the names of the undergraduates in his lab.

 

It is tempting to give priority to writing grants, attending meetings and networking. All of these are important. But it is equally important to remember that as educators, we can have a huge impact on students performing research projects in our lab.

 

When I was an undergraduate student, learning through my research project had the most lasting effect. In fact, I still remember most things that I learned through my research project, compared to almost nothing of what I learned in my coursework. The main reason for that is that my motivation was very different. When I was in the lab, I needed to learn things, because what I learned was necessary to plan my experiments and understand and interpret my experimental results. It was also interesting to read about my research area because it was so relevant to what I was doing. In contrast, in my formal classes I often could not see why what we learned was important.

 

In addition, I learned many practical and transferrable skills through my research. I even managed to publish a couple of papers. And I realized that I really liked scientific research. For all these reasons, I have always felt that there should be much more emphasis on teaching through research projects, ideally from year 1 onwards.

 

Unfortunately, not all undergraduate research projects are perceived as satisfactory by students and there is a considerable percentage of students who leave their research projects early, or consider doing so. There are a variety of reasons for this, including too difficult or boring projects, a poor lab culture and personal conflicts between the undergraduate student and other members of the lab.

 

A very interesting study that I read recently looked at the effect of undergraduate student supervision as a factor for whether the students complete or discontinue (or consider discontinuing) their research projects. According to the paper, prior studies related to this topic have been primarily done in research-intense universities, like NUS. The authors point out that the way undergraduates are being supervised is likely different between research universities (that award undergraduate and PhD degrees) and smaller institutions that do not have PhD programs and award only Master’s and undergraduate degrees. Knowing about these differences could perhaps help to understand the reasons why undergrads are dissatisfied with their research experience.

 

One major difference is that Master’s or primarily undergraduate degree universities and colleges do not have PhD students and postdocs who could act as mentors for undergrads. As a result, in those institutions the professors are more likely directly involved in the supervision of the students. Hence, the authors of the study asked whether the persistence of undergraduates in research programmes differs between institution types and if yes, what factors may be involved in this.

 

The study found that students in Master’s granting and primarily undergraduate universities and colleges were less likely to leave their research project or consider leaving it than students at research intense universities. For instance, compared with students in public research-intense universities, undergraduate students at Master’s granting institutions were 4.5 times less likely to leave their research project. Similarly, students at primary undergraduate institution were 2.8 times less likely to abandon their research labs.