Thank you for considering being a mentor for a Boulder Valley School District high school student who is enrolled in the year-long Science Research Seminar course, taught in all of BVSD high schools.  The students enrolled in this course are highly motivated students who desire an opportunity to perform authentic science research. The success of this program depends on cooperative working partnerships between the students, the mentors, and the supervising teacher of the particular high school. The essential component is a viable research project.

Mentors pursue different approaches to this assignment. Some design a special project to give students the opportunity to develop specific skills. Other mentors bring students into an ongoing research project to work with colleagues or to be given responsibility for a piece of the project that the student is capable of undertaking with minimal supervision. Some assume the roll of an ongoing consultant who provides guidance when students have questions about their own research.  The project may be in any discipline related to science; however, the student must be a participant in research.

So that you have an accurate concept of what your mentoring will involve, it is important to define what a mentorship is not as well as what it is. The student-mentor relationship is not to provide workers for laboratory assistance or office help, nor is it meant to be work experience for career exploration (shadowing). Students are expected to perform such tasks as record keeping and washing laboratory glassware when their research responsibilities require it. However, while these are part of the mentorship experience, they are not the focus. The purpose of mentorship is active student participation in research.