Undergraduate Research Award (URA) applications due March 2

A young woman wearing a white lab coat and bright blue surgical gloves inserts a pipette into a test tube she is holding in her left hand. Her mentor, a woman who wears a white lab coat and glasses, looks on. The younger woman is seated at a counter cluttered with machinery and supplies. In the background is a bulletin board covered with paper and sticky notes. — Miami’s Office of Research for Undergraduates provides funding for undergraduate research, like that done by Rachel Mann (left) under the mentorship of associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry Carole Dabney Smith (right).

For over three decades, the Miami University Senate has sponsored the URA to provide Miami undergraduates with a faculty-mentored experience in developing grant applications. These partnerships are meant to encourage discovery and stimulate creative activity. Students may submit individual projects or team projects. Typical awards range from $150 to $500, but individual projects of exceptional merit or projects involving student teams may be funded up to $1,000. Each individual or team project must be endorsed by a sponsor who certifies that the project is worth doing, has educational value to the student(s) and can be accomplished in the proposed time frame. The aim and result of specific projects supported by the program may be modest as long as the work can reasonably be interpreted as research or a creative endeavor.

Applications for Fall 2015 projects are due March 2, 2015. Full program guidelines and application instructions are available here.

Photos by Scott Kissell, Miami University Photo Services.