One of the features of the software underlying STRAND is the "handshake" badge. The badge indicates that the mentor posting the project in question has agreed to develop an expectations and structure agreement with their student researchers.
If you are a mentor participating in STRAND's "handshake" feature, we thank you for being willing to try out this way of building relationships with student researchers. Our hope is that this kind of agreement will make mentors' expectations for students and vice-versa more transparent from the very beginning, so the quality of the research is enhanced for all parties.
To aid mentors in writing contracts as STRAND moves into the student application review stage (expectations and structure agreements should be created after students are selected), we'd like to share some samples —one developed at Oregon State University, another developed at Northern Illinois University, and a third from Brittany Morgan's lab in Notre Dame's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Feel free to use these agreements as inspiration in the writing process. Ultimately, mentors will write agreements that are specific to their project, research topic, etc., but we hope these samples provide some initial guidance.