The Faculty Mentor Summary Form for URSA Engage 2023/2024 is open now and will close on October 15th at 11:59pm.
Student applications are due December 8, 2023 and notification of awards will be sent in late January. Awardees are expected to engage with their projects for an average of 5 hours a week for the 15-week duration of the project (mid-winter 2024 to the end of spring 2024).
Here are some important considerations:
Faculty who would like to mentor an URSA Engage student(s) will express their interest by submitting a Mentor Summary Form.
Faculty Mentor summaries will be posted on the URSA webpage for students to see. Once summaries are posted, students will begin to reach out to you using the contact information you provide.
Students cannot apply to the program unless they have a faculty member who is committed to mentoring them if they are selected for the program. As students begin to reach out, you will need to decide how many (and which) students you will allow to apply to the URSA Engage Program under your mentorship.
The URSA Engage Program includes all types of faculty members. A major goal of the program is for students to learn basic research skills (e.g. designing surveys, writing literature reviews, navigating IRB, synthesizing data, analyzing data, drawing conclusions, writing reports/grants, collaborating, etc.). We define research broadly as “the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings.” Some may disagree with this definition, but if there’s a time to be flexible about how we define research, that time is now. Students who enroll at OSU expect (and deserve) to have experiences beyond the classroom and it is important that our faculty mentors are the ones to help them do it. We would love to have you listed as one of our faculty partners who is ready to mentor an early-career student this school year.
Examples of projects completed by professional faculty and URSA Engage students in past years: