UROP Research Mentor Project Submission Portal: Submission #825

Mentoring Philosophy When I work with undergraduate researchers, I am committed to crafting a mutually beneficial relationship: not only should I be receiving valuable support on active research projects, but the students with whom I'm working should be receiving mentorship, supervision, and training in discipline-specific research methods and scholarly areas. Because my scholarship is interdisciplinary in nature, extending across English, American studies, and environmental studies, and because this project in particular is a manuscript with multiple chapters each with a slightly different theme, I am able to match students with the particular "slice" of the project that is most directly connected to their own scholarly interests, and I work to help bridge the research they are doing for me into their own research (past students, for instance, have completed senior theses and honors projects building on research we did together, and past projects have led organically to co-authored publications in major peer-reviewed journals). To achieve these goals, I practice a style of research mentorship that focuses on building confidence as well as skills, maintains clear and consistent lines of communication for questions, reactions, ideas, and feedback as ideas and work progress, and respects and leaves room for students' evolving interests to shape their work with me.