2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background: Graduate students have an important role in undergraduate research. They are typically in a triad mentoring relationship, where they mentor the undergraduate and are mentored by their PI or faculty advisor. This type of mentoring relationship is either an open triad, where the PI does not engage with the undergraduate researcher, or a closed triad, where the undergraduate researcher has a mentoring relationship with both the graduate student and the PI. Through facilitating professional development workshops on undergraduate research mentoring with faculty and graduate students, the authors have found that existing mentoring relationship models do not fully describe the relationships between all three members of the mentoring triad. Purpose: This systematic literature review is intended to comprehensively explore the literature related to mentoring triads seeking to understand the graduate student’s role in mentoring undergraduate researchers in order to support additional development of the models. Methodology/Approach: This study follows best practices in systematic literature reviews as described by Borrego, Foster, and Froyd in their 2014 paper: Systematic Literature Reviews in Engineering Education and Other Developing Interdisciplinary Fields. In particular, this study will evaluate the existing literature on undergraduate research mentoring relationships with graduate students. Findings/Conclusions: The initial database keyword search found 1208 articles. After applying various inclusion criteria, 63 articles were included in this systematic literature review. The findings of this study show the various ways that graduate student-undergraduate research mentoring relationships appear in the literature. Most literature supports the existing open/closed triad relationship model implicitly or explicitly (57%). Implications: This study examines articles that explore the relationships that graduate students engage in when acting as mentors for undergraduate researchers. In our current work, interactions with faculty and graduate students suggest that the existing models do not fully encompass the relationships they experience. The role of graduate students as well as the different experiences that postdoctoral researchers face in triadic mentoring relationships are avenues of potential future research.