Professional Student Training
Students involved in the MECIS research projects are expected to perform at the highest levels of research competency. The MECIS students work in multidisciplinary teams and support one another with the main goal of accomplishing the deliverables of the projects. The students are provided with faculty mentors that help guide them throughout their academic studies, and in the case of our undergraduate student assistants, they are also provided with graduate student mentors who assist the undergraduate students in transitioning into their research roles. For this reason, the student research assistants are required to maintain professional hands-on skill-sets that are essential for performing the day-to-day operations and activities of the MECIS. Through the abovementioned trainings, the MECIS students gain invaluable experience, expertise, and hands-on skill-sets that will help them professionally throughout their engineering careers regardless of where their future job may take them.
For graduate students, in particular, they will work closely with the MECIS faculty at UTRGV, with expert advice from the faculty at the partner universities, to develop research projects in one or more of the three subprojects while developing collaborative research skills across all three thrusts. Our graduate mentoring plan trains students to (1) build research skills throughout their course of study via one-on-one mentoring by the MECIS faculty who will also serve on the graduate students’ advisory committees, (2) write articles for journals and conferences, (3) collaborate with other students in UTRGV and partner universities on multidisciplinary research topics spanning the three subprojects, (4) strengthen team cohesion by regularly presenting their research findings to the MECIS students, receiving feedback, and discussing on potential improvements, and (5) build leadership skills by mentoring and conducting research together with undergraduate students. Consistent implementation of this graduate mentoring plan will serve as the basis for student retention.
At the undergraduate level, the MECIS frames three plans to mentor students in order to foster their aspirations to graduate studies and STEM careers: (1) term project-based learning in various undergraduate STEM courses mentored by the MECIS faculty, (2) undergraduate research positions, which recruits underrepresented students and pairs them with the MECIS faculty and graduate student mentors for supervised research in cyber-physical infrastructure systems.