URI_Research _Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2020_Melissa-McCarthy

Smita Ramnarain Assistant Professor Economics

Paige Carmichael ’20 Undergraduate Student Economics

“In completing my own research, having a mentor who challenges me while also supporting me through the inevitable trials of the research process has allowed me to grow in invaluable ways.”

- Paige Carmichael

She adds that she prioritizes an interactive and open research environment where students can experience different opportunities without fear of failure, with an emphasis on process rather than end results. As a mentor, Ramnarain says she has four goals — exposing students to a wide variety of literature, theories, and methodologies in their chosen sub-field, seeing that mentees gain facility with research methods, encouraging students to apply to opportunities, and helping them deal with their successes and failures gracefully. “The most important goal is to introduce students to the research process so that they may eventually formulate their own questions and hypotheses to explore, and start on the path to economic research,” says Ramnarain, pointing to Carmichael’s journey from the fellowship to an independent study and then designing her own project. Ramnarain concedes that mentoring relationships

can be considerably time-intensive and require a significant commitment. But she quickly adds that in exchange mentors reap the great reward of seeing mentees develop into young researchers. “Through mentoring relationships, we are simply investing time into developing future scholars and researchers,” Ramnarain says. “I have benefited from the generosity of my mentors at various points in my own career and recognize the ways in which mentors can have an impact, so I consider establishing such relationships one of the key responsibilities of an educator. “Mentees aren’t simply research grease monkeys or drones; they bring new ideas and fresh perspectives into research. The skills they develop as part of this process are ones that they will use to further their areas of inquiry and perhaps make interventions that expand a body of knowledge eventually.”

Spring | 2020 Page 23