Do you want to engage undergraduate students to work on your research, but you don’t know how to do so productively? Do you worry about the time commitment of doing so?

Working with undergraduate students can help move your research forward productively and can be an enjoyable experience for both you and the students with appropriate planning. This session will offer concrete strategies for recruiting and mentoring undergraduate researchers from program leaders of the Computing Research Association’s UR2PhD (Undergraduate Research To PhD) program, which has provided training for more than 1000 undergraduate researchers and more than 300 of their graduate student mentors since 2023.

Participants will be guided through how to design a well-scoped initial project that is appropriate for undergraduate students and that will advance the participants’ research. Additionally, the tutorial will include a hands-on session in which the participants will develop onboarding materials that they can use repeatedly for new undergraduate students joining their research group over the course of a project’s duration.

Everyone who works with undergraduate students on research or any long running technical project – graduate students, post-docs, faculty members, and industry professionals - can benefit from this session. You do not need to be a computer architect to participate, and we warmly welcome everyone to join this session.

Finally, this session will include a reception with a light dinner mid-way through where participants can discuss the ideas with one another over food, while also learning about CRA and the many opportunities CRA provides to support computing researchers at every stage of their careers.

Sunday, September 27th, 4:30PM - 9:00PM

Organizers

  • Kelly Shaw, Williams College, Co-chair of Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E)
  • Susan H. Rodger, Duke University, Board Member of Computing Research Associations Committee on Widening Participation (CRA-WP)