Strategies and Considerations for Starting an Undergraduate Research Lab as a New Faculty at a PUI

Contribution: This research paper describes challenges and successes of a new faculty starting an undergraduate-only research lab. Considerations and strategies for future faculty at PUI's are developed through participatory research methods which accounts for both faculty and student perspectives. Background: Previous research addresses the challenges of conducting undergraduate (UG) research and the logistical challenges of building a new research lab designed for UG research. A lot of this work has focused on how to scope a research project appropriately, how to scaffold the projects to create a positive UG research experience, and logistical considerations on how to select and obtain lab equipment from the faculty perspective with less consideration for the student perspective. This study builds upon previous research by using co-deisng to develop strategies and considerations through collaboration between both the faculty and students involved in starting the lab. Research Questions: What are some challenges faculty and students starting an UG-only research lab face? How can the faculty and students in the lab address these challenges to create a positive experience? What aspects of starting an UG-only research lab did the students find beneficial to their overall growth? Methodology: For this research study, a co-design approach was used to obtain perspectives from the faculty and students in a new UG-only research lab. Collectively, a list of questions were developed to capture the overall experience of students and faculty during the first summer of research conducted in the lab. The faculty member and each student had an external party conduct a semi-structured, recorded interview following the same set of instructions. A focus group was conducted between all participants to discuss the interview questions and responses as a group and find common/dissimilar themes between the faculty and students. The small sample size, while a limitation with regards to generality of the results, lends itself to narrative analysis. Findings: The interviews and focus group yielded several important considerations for new faculty including having a structured onboarding process for new student researchers, participating in research activities with the students to build community, and granting the students autonomy to decide their own research direction. These findings can be used by new faculty to guide them as they set up new research labs so that the lab can be set up to mutually benefit both the faculty and the students.