Mentoring graduate and undergraduate students in microelectronic systems architecture education and research

Successful undergraduate research programs should encourage students to seek out graduate programs and graduate research possibilities later in their development. Electrical engineering graduate student assistants have been recruited as part of an interdisciplinary team to perform research and assist in the classroom. Undergraduate students in three majors have been used as assistants, developed and engaged in undergraduate research projects with the author. In this project, each student acts in two capacities as instructional laboratory assistant and as a research assistant. As research assistants, they can complete the MSc thesis or BSc senior project work required in fulfilment of their degrees. As instructional laboratory assistants, they add new ideas into the curriculum, acting as role models for other students, and getting greater exposure to the technology. These duties are substantially different from the traditional teaching assistant duties since as instructional laboratory assistants they are engaged in improving the technology in the laboratory and the curriculum as well as providing a mentoring role to undergraduate students. This combined role can aid the students in selecting research issues that can be directly applied in the classroom laboratories and used to enhance the curriculum