Research Peer Mentors

WHAT DO RESEARCH PEER MENTORS DO?

OUR Research Peer Mentors play an important role to help develop a positive and engaged community of student researchers at Northwestern, and help students new to undergraduate research navigate the process, particularly the cohort of summer URG winners. Research peer mentors serve during Spring, Summer, and Fall Quarters. Mentors will have the opportunity to work with faculty and staff within the Office of Undergraduate Research and gain mentoring experience.

GET TO KNOW THEM!

If you’re interested in learning more about our latest peer mentors, check out their profiles here!

Responsibilities

Research Mentoring Responsibilities
  • Participate in 1.5 hr training session in Spring Quarter, which will focus on communication styles and mentorship approaches.
  • Attend an evening Kick Off The Summer! event for all Mentors and summer research grant award winners (in Spring Quarter, date TBD) where you will talk about your research experiences.
  • Help run Research Skills workshops in conjuncture with OUR staff during Spring Quarter (first two weeks of June) for your mentees.
  • Meet with each of your mentees (typically 8-12 people) at least once during Spring Quarter to chat about how they’re feeling about their upcoming summer research projects.
  • Participate in a 2 brief training session in Summer Quarter.
  • Meet with each of your mentees (typically 8-12 people) twice over the summer. Discussions typically center on topics like project progress, project challenges, how they’re feeling about support from their faculty mentor, and processing their research experience to think about what they might pursue next.
  • Participate in a de-briefing session with staff at the Office of Undergraduate Research in early Fall to assess how the program is going and brainstorm ideas for future development.
Outreach Responsibilities
  • Help promote the Undergraduate Research and Arts Exposition and the Creative Arts Festival in Spring.
  • Support OUR’s Instagram Research Takeovers over the summer.
  • Speak about your research experiences at Office of Undergraduate Research info sessions.
  • Propose (and potentially carry out) new outreach strategies that will reach students currently underrepresented in the undergraduate research community.

Eligibility and Time Commitment

Eligibility
  • Must have received an Academic Year or Summer URG from the Office of Undergraduate Research, or an independent grant from another department on campus.
  • Must be on campus in Spring 2023 (please contact the Education Manager to discuss potential exemptions)
  • Must, at minimum, be available to conduct 2-3 one-on-one checkins with a cohort of 8-12 mentees between spring and summer quarters.
  • The OUR funds all kinds of research, so we need Peer Research Mentors with all kinds of experience! Students from the Natural Sciences, Engineering, Social Sciences, Arts, Humanities, and Design; with experience in labs, archives, creative projects, interviews, quantitative and qualitative methods, and more; based abroad, in Evanston, elsewhere in the US, or online.
  • This program is by application only; OUR will review applications and conduct a brief interview with candidates.
Time Commitment
  • The Research Mentor Program will run during spring and summer quarters.
  • Research Mentors can be located anywhere as long as they remain in contact with their mentees electronically.
  • The average weekly time commitment will vary over the course of he program, with the summer being more time intensive (roughly two to five hours per week of office hours).

DEADLINE

By application only: https://forms.gle/vELCpRiMniHGHym16; students can ask for more information from the Education Program Manager. Priority given to applications received by 4/14/23.