2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Undergraduate research experiences play a pivotal role in shaping students' scientific futures, either inspiring them to continue pursuing research or discouraging them from exploring further opportunities. This exploratory study aims to better understand the experiences of undergraduate researchers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields through a population of undergraduate participants in a full-time multidisciplinary undergraduate research program. Student- and mentor-reported perceptions and scores were collected at the end of each summer term to evaluate the students’ research performance and reflect on their experience and growth. Electronic (Google Form) surveys prompted students to self-evaluate their research performance over the summer term as a numerical score between 1 (worst) and 5 (best), and to provide a written justification for the selected score. Mentors scored their students with this rubric, and they were asked to provide positive feedback and suggest areas for improvement. A total of N=235 responses were included in the analysis from 162 unique students, with each response reflecting one unique summer term of research. The numerical scores revealed high agreement between student and mentor perception of student performance, with a mean absolute difference of just 0.23 (4.6%) between student and mentor scores. Written responses, comprising student reflections and mentor feedback, were then thematically analyzed with the aid of large language models (LLM) for the identification of commonly occurring thematic components. This analysis focused on the cases in which discrepancies arose between student and mentor scores. Most notably, students consistently focus on tangible deliverables and outcomes while mentors typically focus on their students’ growth as scientists. On average, students tend to score themselves slightly lower than their mentors score them, often referring to unexpected challenges. In those situations, the mentors’ feedback revolved around the student’s demonstrated “persistence” and “scientific maturity”- focusing on how the student handled obstacles. We expect results will improve our understanding of student-mentor relationships and perspectives within STEM research, with the future goal to aid in the development of effective mentorship programs and tools to improve undergraduate student research performance and outcomes.