2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Once a rare practice aimed at graduate student recruitment, engaging undergraduates in faculty research programs is now an opportunity in most chemical engineering programs. The students who perform the research enjoy the reported benefits of strengthened technical skills, enhanced critical thinking, development of communication and teamwork abilities, and greater awareness of career opportunities. Providing undergraduate students opportunities for research is recognized as a high-impact practice. The benefits for the institution include improved recruitment and retention. However, the benefits of undergraduate research for faculty mentors are less studied and understood. This ongoing study seeks to explore the perceptions and practices of chemical engineering faculty about the barriers and benefits for supporting undergraduate research.
Prior work involving a survey of chemical engineering faculty showed that those who served as mentors to undergraduate researchers were largely motivated by the knowledge that they were benefiting the students. The most significant drawback reported was the time that effective mentorship requires. As an additional evaluation of the survey data, this investigation focuses on chemical engineering faculty perceptions of specific benefits to the students and on how the faculty interact with those students.
In the survey, a list of potential benefits to student learning was provided, and respondents rated their significance based on their own experience with undergraduate researchers. Dealing with obstacles in the research process was the highest rated experience, followed by analyzing data and identifying data to collect. The lowest rated included using chemical engineering terminology. This work will include an analysis of the results comparing faculty perspectives on students’ learning of skills specific to the research project versus their professional development and enhancement of critical thinking skills.
The faculty surveyed were also given a list of mentorship practices and asked about the frequency with which they exercised them. When examining mentor activity, most practices were broadly applied. However, general encouragement activities were most highly reported: treating the student with respect, making yourself available, and encouraging communication through questions and answers. The lowest reported activity was offering advice on courses and electives, which is perhaps viewed more as an advising activity. The next lowest response was teaching a lab technique or planning an experiment. This may indicate that faculty mentors are highly dependent on graduate students or post-docs for direct supervision of undergraduate researchers.
Finally, faculty reporting of specific practices with respect to student recruitment and selection, funding, and meetings will be addressed.