Eligible Applicants:

• Northwestern first year undergraduate students who identify as first generation, lower income, people of color, and/or marginalized, including international students.
• Northwestern first year undergraduate students who want to explore research or creative work in non-lab environments: arts, humanities, journalism, social sciences, etc.  This program is focused on supporting research and creative art that speaks to issues of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Ineligible Applicants:

• Non-Northwestern undergraduates.
• Non-first year Northwestern undergraduates.
• Northwestern first year undergraduates who do not identify as first generation, lower income, people of color, and/or marginalized.
• Northwestern first year undergraduates who are solely interested in pursuing research in lab environments.

Eligible Faculty:

• Full-time Northwestern University teaching faculty.
• Faculty whose work is primarily done outside of a lab/research group environment such as the arts, humanities, journalism, social sciences, etc.
• Faculty must be willing to mentor the student over the full 15 months of the program.

Ineligible Faculty:

• Emeritus faculty, faculty retiring or leaving Northwestern the following academic year, single year visiting faculty, and other teaching faculty who will not be at Northwestern next academic year are not eligible.
• Graduate students and post-docs are not eligible.

In your application, you can pick up to 3 faculty with whom you would like to work. 

1. Describe a time you demonstrated persistence in a challenging situation. (max 250 words)
2. Describe a time you demonstrated mental resilience (e.g., self-efficacy, perspective, focus)? (max 250 words)
3. How do you envision participation in this program will help you continue developing problem-solving skills? (max 250 words)
4. How do you envision participation in this program will help you continue developing your sense of curiosity? (max 250 words)
5. What has prepared you to join a cohort of students interested in different areas of research in a program where a diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, and ability status is valued? (max 250 words)

Second, you will list 1-3 faculty with whom you would be interested in working.  In a separate paragraph for each faculty member, you will explain why you are interested in working with them. What about their work is interesting to you? Why are you interested in learning the methodologies they use? What would you hope to gain by working with them? (max 250 words for each faculty member)

Third, you will upload a resume.

We encourage you to work with an OUR advisor on your application materials, especially if you have any questions about how to answer the prompts!  Use our Advising Request Form!

If you have not written a resume before, we recommend you review the resources provided by Career Advancement before starting. The following tips should serve as a baseline; students can receive additional advising on this process from Northwestern Career Advancement (NCA), and they can schedule an appointment through Handshake. There are lots of helpful examples and resources on the NCA website, including their Career Guide with sample cover letters and their page specific to Resume Writing.

FORMATTING:

• Resume is maximum of 1 page.
• Save document as a PDF prior to submission.
• Minimum 11 point font.

RESUME CONTENT:

• Common sections include:
  • Contact information
  • Education
  • Relevant Experience (does not have to be formal job experience)
  • Leadership
  • Awards
  • Skills
• Start bullet points with action verbs. NCA has a list of action verbs to help you get started. Where possible, try to quantify your experience or frame it in a way that shows how it is relevant to the position to which you are applying. 
• Place the most important information first and group related experiences together. Use section categories to highlight your experiences most relevant to their work first. Within each category, items will be listed chronologically. 
• Include relevant non-work experiences. Think broadly about what you might include; any activity you do consistently that has an output you can point to can work! For this particular resume, you might include relevant coursework to demonstrate interest in a topic area.

Click here to download an Example Resume.

You will need to select a faculty or staff member who can endorse your application. This endorsement does not necessarily have to be from someone who has met you through coursework; it could be your advisor, work-study supervisor, or other campus mentor. When submitting your application, you will need to enter this person’s netID or email. Upon submission of your application, our system will send an email to the selected sponsor asking them to respond to the following endorsement prompts:

• Please comment on this student’s ability to respond to any feedback they have received. If you have additional observations about this student’s more general communication abilities (for instance, their ability to listen, ask questions, effectively express ideas and questions verbally or through writing), please share those as well.
• Please share your observations about the extent that this student is inclined to seek out different types of information (for instance, information related to intellectual or interpersonal pursuits or any other interests).
• In what ways do you think this student in particular would benefit from a long-term mentored research experience and professional development workshops?
• Is there anything else you feel would be helpful information regarding this candidate? *optional*

Importantly, your selected sponsor will not receive notification to submit this endorsement until after you formally submit your application. We recommend you provide these prompts ahead of time (ideally, at least a week in advance), so they can begin drafting their responses. Then, when they receive the email notification requesting their endorsement, they can simply copy/paste in their response.  They will have 72 hours after the deadline to submit their endorsement.

To find someone’s NetID or email: Using the online directory, follow the link that says “You can also display additional technical details about people and NetIDs.” Then click on ‘display more’ to see their full details including the NetID.

1. After searching by name, click {More} to find the NetID.
2. If you are off campus, you will need to be logged in via VPN.
3. When you type the NetID into your application, hit tab, and then wait for a few seconds.  The system uses the NetID to pull other data, and it can take a moment.

After you submit your application, the system will email the faculty member a link for submitting the endorsement.

Apply through this Application Portal.

• Log in with your NetID and password.
• Click “Discover Opportunities and Apply”
• Navigate to the Undergraduate Research menu.
• Click “View All” to see all of the current and open grant cycles.
• Enter the required information, and upload PDFs of your resume. 

Final Submission
When you submit the application, you will get one of two system responses:

• Option 1: Error message that there were some problems with your application. The errors will be highlighted in red; please review and correct them before you resubmit. 
• Option 2: If there are no errors, you will be sent to a survey site. Doing the survey is a requirement to complete the application. It is a short survey that helps us continue advocating for funding and make improvements to the process.

You will receive an automatically generated confirmation email within 15 minutes of your successful submission.

If you have any questions/issues, please reach out to the Office of Undergraduate Research during business hours (M-F 8:30-5pm CST).

The Office of Undergraduate Research will compile all of the responses from faculty and seek to build a cohort of 7-8 faculty-student pairs.  OUR will seek to build a diverse cohort across schools, research areas, and personal experiences.