Targeted Recruitment

The Stewardship Model begins with proactive, targeted recruitment of diverse students. Prior research finds that stereotype threat and related issues can deter even highly qualified students from underrepresented groups from seeking competitive opportunities (Steele and Aronson Reference Steele and Aronson1995). Relatedly, our subfield lags behind other subfields in political science in terms of the presence and status of scholars of color. As of 2019, Black and Latinx scholars represent only 8% of IR scholars in the United States, compared to 12.5% in comparative politics and 14% in American politics (American Political Science Association 2019). This means that underrepresented students in IR are less likely to see people like them on course syllabi or at the front of the classroom. As a consequence, diverse students are less likely to feel welcome and included and less likely to specialize in IR at either the undergraduate or graduate level. This has follow-on effects beyond the professorate, contributing to the lack of diversity among international affairs practitioners (Center for Strategic and International Studies 2018). The less diverse a particular field is, the more important targeted recruitment becomes for labs working in that area.Footnote

In addition to standard advertising of open positions on university-wide listservs and websites, faculty and student members of the SPEC Lab intentionally seek out students from diverse backgrounds—in courses, residential education, and advising hours—and encourage them to consider participation, irrespective of previous experience. Faculty also have connected with our university’s Office for Diversity as well as Black and Latinx student groups on campus to spread the word about the SPEC Lab. Because many students from diverse backgrounds must pursue paid employment opportunities to meet their financial needs, we also have worked with our university’s Financial Aid Office to recruit and pay students through the Federal Work-Study program. These recruitment practices facilitate diverse students’ entrance into the pipeline.

Training and Professionalization

Undergraduates arrive on our campuses with great variation in their academic background and technical toolkit. For this reason, we take a developmental approach to training, emphasizing the acquisition of skills over time. This increases accessibility of UREs for students who may not have had the same level of preparation, and it encourages retention of students who initially may feel discouraged by the demands of research.

To prepare students for mixed-methods research, the SPEC Lab trains students in three areas: (1) statistical computing and applied data science, (2) qualitative research design and process tracing, and (3) scientific communication.Footnote ¹ Our trainings are offered via several avenues: semi-regular workshops run by doctoral students and senior undergraduate lab members, a pair of year-long for-credit courses, and student-run office hours to support students’ self-study. By offering a variety of training contexts, we accommodate a range of student interests and time constraints. We encourage participation by allowing all (non-credit-bearing) training time to count as working for the Lab. The materials from our in-lab trainings and syllabi for credit-bearing courses are available in online appendix A.

Rather than teach statistics, which is easily available via for-credit courses outside of the SPEC Lab, we focus on applied skills—for example, data management and visualization—that often are omitted from formal curricula in quantitative methods courses. Our goal is to prepare students for the nonacademic job market as well as for graduate school; therefore, we developed our research design and data science curricula based, in part, on feedback from private-sector employers. We also train students to translate and disseminate social science research findings for broader audiences, involving them in the creation of written work for dissemination via blogs as well as explainer videos and comics. Senior members of the SPEC Lab, who have excelled in their team’s work, are offered the opportunity to coauthor op-eds with faculty PIs or to participate in regional and national conferences in our field.

Applied Research Experience

Instruction and application occur simultaneously in the SPEC Lab. Students work in teams on faculty research projects related to urgent social problems. Research teams generally consist of a faculty PI, a PhD student adviser, an undergraduate student team leader, and three to six other undergraduate researchers. This team-based approach is critical for retaining diverse students because it allows them to develop a research community and a network of support.Footnote ² Muddling through a complex research problem as a group normalizes seeking help from and giving help to others, and it reframes research as a process of communal discovery.

While working with the faculty PIs, members of the SPEC Lab observe the different phases of a research project and are actively involved in executing them. Faculty PIs and PhD student advisers emphasize the connection between weekly tasks and the “big picture” of how those tasks contribute to the larger project. Students who participate in the Lab for multiple years may see a project move through the entire process. This increases student “buy-in” and encourages the retention of undergraduate researchers.

Multilevel Mentoring

We strive for independent, supported work, where every student has a high degree of autonomy in completing their tasks but also has access to several layers of support to navigate obstacles. Each lab member has access to three primary mentors: a faculty PI, a doctoral student, and an undergraduate team leader. Becker and Zvobgo (Reference Becker and Zvobgo2020) also provide an overview of the mentoring philosophy of the SPEC Lab, which discusses at greater length our support for students’ academic development and their psychosocial well-being. This mentoring strategy is critical to the success of the Stewardship Model because research suggests that students from diverse backgrounds place more value on mentoring relationships that incorporate their emotional and social needs (Ishiyama Reference Ishiyama2007).

Building a Learning Community

Multilevel mentoring is a key tool in achieving a broader goal: a holistically supportive learning community. Within this community, students have a safe space to work, numerous role models from their own and other underrepresented groups, and a clear path for leadership advancement within the SPEC Lab. In addition to directly supporting their mentees, a central task of all Lab leaders is to maintain this sense of community, ensuring that the types of bias that threaten students outside of the Lab are kept out of the Lab, and that all students have support matched to their unique needs and ambitions. Several additional practices work to enhance and reinforce the lab-as-community:

1. 1. Students may record lab hours for time they spend tutoring or assisting other lab members, even if it is for a non-lab-related class or assignment.

2. 2. An “expert board” lists lab members that students can turn to for help: highlighted skills include foreign languages, programming expertise, and course experience.

3. 3. Group outings foster interaction among students on different teams.

4. 4. Markers of group identity, such as t-shirts and laptop stickers, enhance a sense of belonging.

Faculty Time

For-credit lab participation can reduce time constraints on faculty with heavy course loads. When faculty receive course credit for providing mentored research experiences, they gain the ability to advance their own research agenda and mentor students using time that previously would have been spent in the lecture hall. Example syllabi are available in online appendix A.

Student Salaries

Many students from underrepresented groups face tight financial constraints and must work a paying job while in school. Both Federal Work-Study funds and means testing of funding eligibility can reduce wage costs, but they remain daunting. Faculty interested in scaling their research activities with undergraduate students would do well to investigate programs at their institution that fund undergraduate research. In recent decades, Offices of Undergraduate Research have been established at a range of institutions that frequently provide funds to pay students for their work on faculty research, during either the school year or the summer (Hewlett Reference Hewlett2018).

Additionally, private-sector partnerships may be possible, regardless of the substantive research area in which a lab works. Firms face their own version of the pipeline problem and struggle to build sufficiently diverse workforces, including in social science fields. Partnership with an undergraduate research lab that uses the Stewardship Model provides firms with access to a diverse population of well-trained entry-level researchers. The SPEC Lab has received financial support from three “Pipeline Partners”: Talus Analytics, a data science firm; NOVA Infrastructure, a Wall Street investment firm; and Facebook. The pitch document we use in recruiting these partners is available in online appendix B.

Institutional Buy-In

Institutional support is most likely to be forthcoming when faculty can connect their lab practices to departmental and institutional priorities. Fortunately, the Stewardship Model is malleable in this respect: it serves both teaching and research excellence, promotes diversity and inclusion, and appeals to a variety of potential donors. We have coordinated with the communications arm of our university, which publicizes the op-eds we coauthor with students; the advancement office, which asks us to meet with donors interested in our data science training; and the admissions office, which highlights opportunities for undergraduate research experience in its presentations and brochures. We also have received financial support from university initiatives to enhance diversity and inclusion.