Undergraduate Opportunties

• Glasscock, Melbern G. Center for Humanities Research
• Office of Undergraduate Research
• Office of the Vice President for Research
• Undergraduate Research Fellows

Departments in the College of Liberal Arts offer multiple opportunities for undergraduate students to engage in a variety of research activities. Some offer financial incentives; others offer course credit; a few offer both. The following section describes these primary research categories. For more information on specific opportunities, contact the individual department.

UROPs - Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Some departments offer stipends to undergraduate students for assisting selected faculty members in conducting research. Faculty members provide selection committees with abstracts (summaries of research projects planned or in progress), from which they select a limited number eligible for undergraduate assistance. Project descriptions are circulated to students through their instructors. Students then complete application forms, which are subsequently screened and evaluated by the selected researchers, who make the final decisions. UROPs are often combined with Directed Study courses for course credit. Some restrictions are imposed by the departments.

Co-ops or Internships

Co-op or internship experiences with academic or corporate entities provide students with valuable real-world experiences. Such positions may be paid or unpaid and may be pre-arranged by a department or the TAMU Career Center, or they may be established individually by a collaborative arrangement between the student and a potential employer. If a student can provide evidence before the experience that it is related to a department's program of study, she or he may request Directed Study credit for submitting a final research paper relating to the experience. Prior approval is required. (See Directed Study below.)

Directed Study

Courses numbered 485 are designated as Directed Studies. A student interested in conducting research in an area of personal interest must find and contact a specific faculty member to supervise the project. Ideally, the faculty member's research interests are close enough to the student's to provide sufficient guidance to help him or her narrow the focus of the research and develop a concrete action plan with measurable objectives that the student can complete in a single semester. Directed Studies usually do not involve financial incentives, but do result in course credit.

Senior Seminar/Special Topics Courses

Courses numbered 481 (Senior Seminar) or 489 (Special Topic) are courses that focus on an area of interest to the faculty member teaching the course. These courses often require students to conduct original research on related topics and write final papers suitable for publication. Subjects of these courses usually change each semester, as faculty members rotate the privilege.

Research Papers

Many Liberal Arts courses, especially those numbered 300 and higher, require students to develop research papers. Topics may be assigned by the faculty member, or restrictions or guidelines on topic selection and/or research methods may be imposed. However, it is not unusual for a student to receive approval to pursue a research project of his or her own choosing and to receive course credit for the effort. Undergraduate students are encouraged to submit final papers to the following two campus-based publicications: Agora and the Undergraduate Journal of Science.