Mentoring Undergraduate Students Preparing for Graduate Study in Engineering-A CREATE Case Study

This paper discusses the Collaborative Research Experiences in Advanced Technology and Engineering (CREATE) undergraduate research program and one of its associated research projects. CREATE is a program that targets undergraduate students from non-research based universities who are interested in pursuing graduate study in engineering. CREATE is a short-term project that takes place during the summer semester. Since it is a short-term project and the students have little experience with engineering research, the authors posit that a research environment that conforms to the student's incoming skill-set is needed so that the time needed for the student to learn the experimental environment can be reduced.