Student FAQs
LASURI offers undergraduate students an opportunity to move beyond the classroom and establish a deeper level of engagement with faculty through research. It is an exciting and rewarding complement to a student's college experience. Here are a few answers to common student questions:
Common Questions from Students... Heading link
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Not at all! All full-time LAS undergraduates in good academic standing and who have earned at least 24 semester hours with a minimum 2.5 GPA are eligible to participate.
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LASURI is open to any student whose major field of study is in the college of Liberal Arts and Sciences. We encourage students majoring in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to participate in the program, and we understand that research is conducted differently across the disciplines. We welcome variety in LASURI participants’ research endeavors!
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We encourage you to continue your research partnership over several semesters. However, to serve the largest number of students as possible, LASURI funds are generally limited to one year. Students are not prohibited from applying for a second LASURI award, but we urge you to apply for other scholarships or register for course credit instead.
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The purpose of LASURI is to facilitate productive research partnerships between professors and undergraduates. Mentors and students are free to work together on any project they so wish, as long as the basic program requirements of active mentorship, research activity, and research presentation are met.
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Lucky you! Proceed directly to the LASURI student application. Your faculty mentor does not have to be listed on the URE website.
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Your award will be automatically applied to any outstanding balance on your student account and any remaining money will be released to you. A project research budget fund will be sent to your Faculty Mentor’s department to help cover the costs of the research project.
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Half of each semester’s award will be released after the second week of the term; the other half will be released after the midpoint of the term.
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LASURI funds are limited and we try to include as many faculty as possible, which generally means that an individual faculty mentor is unlikely to receive multiple students at the same time. Faculty with multiple students under consideration are asked to rank the student projects in order of preference, and in most cases, the top-ranked project is the most likely to receive funding. When the applications are all exceptionally strong, the selection committee may fund a second student or recommend that a student be named an alternate. In a typical year, alternates end up receiving funding, even if only for one semester. Additionally, we select students for some other undergraduate awards, such as the Howard L. Kaufman Undergraduate Student Research Award, from the same pool, so a faculty member might have multiple student research assistants for this reason.
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LASURI funds are limited and we aren’t able to fund every deserving applicant. However, a certain amount of flux creeps into our students’ lives, for any number of reasons — including graduating earlier than planned. Thus, funding may become available to support worthy applications that were not funded during the initial application review. The selection committee identifies and ranks alternates to be funded if another participant withdraws from LASURI. There is no guarantee that an alternate will be offered funding, but it remains a possibility, and being named an alternate should be seen as an acknowledgment of the research proposal’s strength.
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Attend a question and answer session for an overview of the process and how to prepare an application, and get answers to any questions you may have. You may also email us at LASURI@uic.edu.