The purpose of this paper was to understand whether the long‐held beliefs about the importance of mentoring would be revealed as what actually occurs in an undergraduate research program. The authors describe students’ perceptions of the mentoring process and students’ beliefs about how it impacted their experiences as undergraduate researchers and their development as scientists. The authors also described are professors’ perceptions of their roles and effectiveness as mentors in students’ development as scientists. As this grounded research study shows, students and professors described student gains as increased technical expertise and communication skills.