General Information

What does UROP do?

Put simply, UROP funds undergraduate research, scholarly and creative work with several types of grants. In other words, students get paid for participating in academic enrichment--scholarly activity which generally occurs outside the classroom (with some exceptions). UROP projects are essentially partnerships between CU's outstanding faculty and highly motivated and engaged students.

Types of grants include:

• Assistantships
• Individual
• Team Grants
• Research Seminars

Why seek funding for undergraduate projects?

Undergraduate research and creative activities provide the following:

• in-depth learning opportunities to pursue disciplinary interests of students' own choosing outside the classroom
• an understanding of the scholarly norms, methods, vocabulary, and assumptions of the field
• close student-faculty relationships and mentoring which enhance students' education--with the additional benefit of providing contacts for professional references when applying for other grants, scholarships, internships, graduate study and jobs
• academic and professional credentials which will aid students in future endeavors
• invaluable experience conceptualizing a project, estimating budgets and writing a professional-level grant proposal

Types of awards

Assistantships

Assistantships provide recipients with an hourly wage so that they can gain exposure to the fundamentals related to research, creative or scholarly work by working with a faculty member on an existing project. Students benefit from the guidance and mentoring of the faculty member while performing non-clerical scholarly tasks as contribution to the faculty member's work. Each assistantship carries a maximum award of $8/hour for 100 hours and is renewable once. Assistantships are ideal for students who want to do research or creative work, but have little or no experience.

Individual Grants

Individual grants allow students to work with varying degrees of independence on their own projects under the guidance of a faculty sponsor. In some fields the project may represent a portion of a larger project (such as in a lab); in others, projects may be of the student's own design. Students applying for this grant should have enough knowledge of the research methods, procedures, or creative techniques necessary to perform independently. Students writing honors theses, creating fine arts or performance projects, or doing research while studying abroad would all apply for individual grants.

Students in the biosciences conducting laboratory research qualify for HHMI grants, provided by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. HHMI grants support full academic year projects and require recipients to participate in various professional development seminars and activities throughout the year. These activities are designed to integrate undergraduates into the scientific community while preparing them for post-baccalaureate goals such as graduate school and/or professional programs. Students will benefit from topics including Fundamentals of Applying to Graduate School, Science and Ethics, How to Write an Abstract, and Strategies for Assembling a Scientific Poster. Students will also participate in a poster presentation session at the end of the academic year. There is a slightly different application for HHMI projects.

Funding for individual grants varies. Typically, fall and summer recipients can receive a maximum grant of $1200 for a single project. Summer and HHMI recipients can receive a maximum grant of $2400. Final decisions about funding amounts are at the discretion of UROP.

Team grants

Two or more undergraduates working together on research, creative or scholarly work under the guidance of a faculty sponsor should apply for a team grant. Customarily, each student has a designated, well-defined role in the project, and all students are expected to work as co-researchers. If the students on the project are simply assisting the faculty sponsor it would be more appropriate to apply for individual UROP Assistantships.

Funding up to $3000 per team project is available, but may not exceed $1200 per student on the team. Students or faculty requesting funding for capstone or other course-related projects may receive up to $250 per student not to exceed $1000 per project. Stipends are not available to students when the project earns them academic credit. In this case funds may only be used to support expenses associated with the project. If the object of a team grant project is to produce a publication, funding is limited to a maximum of $500 per student, not to exceed $3000, and all funds must be used for printing costs. Other criteria for publication projects include:

• Published work must be by undergraduates only.
• Publication must have a unique niche (i.e. the content can't be similar to another publication on campus).
• Applicants must have signed waiver and release forms for any models that are identifiable in the publication.
• No free advertising should be included in the publication.

Seminars

UROP will fund two different types of research seminars: 1) A seminar that focuses primarily on the faculty member's research, creative, or scholarly work with the goal of helping students understand both what scholarship in the field "looks like" and what faculty members do when they do research. 2) A seminar that focuses generally on research in the field by introducing students to an array of work by practitioners from the discipline. The intent here is, again, to show students what scholarship in the field looks like. In other words, after taking a UROP research seminar, students should have a good understanding of what it means to be a literary critic, a research biologist, a philosopher, a composer, etc. Seminars should be small (no fewer than 12 students and no more than 25) and are intended as pilot projects, with the hope that the department will fund subsequent versions of the course. Grant amounts are $4200 for course release, overload salary, or expenses associated with the seminar.

Eligibility criteria

• Students must be full-time undergraduates at CU-Boulder for the duration of the project's timeline (i.e. taking a minimum of 12 credit hours).
• Students applying for summer grants must be attending CU full time the semester before and after the summer project. The only exceptions to this are August graduates who may apply, within appropriate deadlines, for summer funding. August graduates must carry at least 6 credit hours during the summer that they work on the project.
• Students must have a faculty sponsor. See Finding a Faculty Sponsor section.

UROP attempts to fully fund as many students as possible throughout the year. While there is never a guarantee that a project will be funded, we highly recommend getting your applications in earlier rather than later.

We accept assistantship applications, non-HHMI individual grant proposals, and team grants for the academic year between July 1st and January 31st.

HHMI grant proposals are accepted only until September 15th, while funds last.

All summer applications (assistantships, individual, and team grant proposals) are due the first Monday of March at 1 p.m.

Faculty should submit seminar proposals one to two semesters in advance of the proposed course offering.

Those applicants who are graduating in the semester of their proposed research (graduating seniors) have specific deadlines. Those are August 1st (or the first Monday following that date) for fall, and the first Monday following January 1st for spring; the regular deadline applies for summer. Please note: students must be taking summer courses if they apply for an end of career summer grant.