Modern graduate student mentors: Evidence-based best practices and special considerations for mentoring undergraduates in ecology and evolution

Abstract

This article serves as a short `best practices' aimed at graduatestudents for advising undergraduates, specifically within thedisciplines of ecology and evolution. It offers documented research onundergraduate research experiences, and the most effective mentoringstrategies for success across Science, Technology, Engineering, andMathematics (STEM) disciplines, as well as practical methods for how toenact these strategies. Most importantly, this work serves particularlyto highlight issues undergraduates may encounter in conducting researchspecifically in ecology and evolution, and what graduate student mentorscan do to help students overcome these challenges.