Doctoral student Fred Stutzman has been awarded the Graduate Mentor Support Grant from the UNC at Chapel Hill's Office for Undergraduate Research for his excellent mentoring skills.
"One of the great things about SILS, and UNC in general, is an environment that nourishes meaningful research collaboration between faculty and students. I've been a beneficiary of this environment, and it has been my pleasure and honor to share what I've learned with undergraduate researchers."
One example of Stutzman's mentoring skills was helping undergraduate student, Christian Yoder, as he planned his first research project.
"I'm an undergraduate and have never undertaken a research project before," said Yoder. "When I first started out, I was pretty clueless to what all it entailed. Simple things like creating variables and constructs to define these variables were very foreign to me."
Stutzman assisted Yoder with his measures and statistical analysis.
"While I could put into words exactly what I wanted to test, I didn't understand how to carefully measure my research questions and hypotheses through quantitative reasoning," explains Yoder. "Fred taught me how to do this."
According to its Web site, the Office of Undergraduate Research "developed the mentoring program for graduate students, which involves annual workshops held during GTA orientation each Fall, contributions to workshops on mentoring organized by the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and collaborations with the Training Initiative in Biomedical and Biological Sciences." The Office encourages graduate students in good standing to apply for a Graduate Student Mentor Support Award of $500 per semester if chosen.
