URAP Faculty Applicants

Eligible Applicants:

• Full-time Northwestern University faculty.
• Non-tenure track faculty and lecturers who are teaching this year are eligible, and strongly encouraged to apply as long as they will be at Northwestern the following year.
• Postdocs teaching undergraduate coursework are eligible, and strongly encouraged to apply. Post-docs on two year fellowships can only apply for a Summer or Academic Year URAP in their first year.

Ineligible Applicants:

• 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 to apply. URAP seeks to foster long-term mentoring relationships between faculty and students.
• Graduate students and non-teaching post-docs are not eligible to apply.
• Faculty from other institutions.

Note: If you are a post-doc or other temporary employee of the university, you may encounter some difficulty logging into our application website because your LDAP University ID lists you as ‘staff’ rather than ‘faculty.’ If you are considering applying, please attempt to log into the site well before the deadline and contact the URAP Coordinator immediately if you have any difficulty, so that we can help you work around this problem. 

Overall, this program is meant for student mentees with no prior research experience, or no prior experience in the proposed methodologies. If you are not sure if your desired mentee would be eligible on this basis, please consult this Student Eligibility Guide. Typically, the faculty review committee is looking for students to make major shifts across fields (i.e. moving from humanities to natural sciences etc.); otherwise the argument needs to be very clearly framed about how the student is still considered new to research and why they are not yet ready to pursue something more independent.

Eligible Applicants:

• Undergraduate Northwestern students who are new to research.
• Undergraduate Northwestern students who are interested in conducting research in a new field that is significantly different than their previous research.
• Under applicable policy, the University cannot hire someone who is outside of the United States. The hired student must reside on US soil at time of hire and throughout the duration of the grant period.
• For international students: all URAP students must have a Social Security Number (SSN) before they are able to begin working/earning money. Students do not need a SSN to apply for the program. If the student is selected for hiring, then the Office of Undergraduate Research can write a job offer letter to start the SSN application process. SSN-related delays may impact the student’s ability to complete work during the grant period. Please talk with us prior to applying so you have a sense of timeline and process required and can make informed financial decisions!

Ineligible Applicants:

• Students who are not residing on US soil at time of hire or during completion of grant hours.
• Seniors graduating early cannot be selected for Academic Year URAP positions (given that most students do not begin working until Winter, and the student needs to be an active undergraduate student to be eligible).
• Undergraduate Northwestern students who have already held a URAP position.
• Undergraduate Northwestern students who are prepared to conduct independent research (you should apply for our independent research grants instead!).
• URAP awardees may NOT simultaneously hold an independent grant during their award tenure.

If you hire more than one student, BOTH students must meet the eligibility requirements.

You can apply one of two ways: either with a pre-selected student or run a job search. If you have one student selected but would like to hire another, please indicate in the application form that you would like to hire two students and that you have one student already, but want to hire a second. You will input the NetID of your preselected student, and then you will fill out the open job search prompts asking you to describe your ideal applicant and how you will determine a final candidate from your pool of applicants. The rest of the hiring process will move forward as described below for each of your hires.

Pre-selected student: Double check that your student is a good fit for this program by reviewing the eligibility guide. You will enter the student’s email or netID during the submission process, which will autopopulate the student’s information. The student(s) will receive an email within 15 minutes of your application submission asking them to submit their resume and cover letter. The student(s) will have a maximum of 24 hours after the application deadline to upload their supporting documents, otherwise the application will not be considered for review.

Running an open job search: We can help you find great candidates! In your application, indicate that you do not have a pre-selected student. This selection will provide prompts asking you to describe your ideal applicant and how you will determine a final candidate from your pool of applicants. After your URAP grant is awarded, we will use the information in your application to create a job description template, which we will send to you to finalize (with a turn around time of 3-5 days so we can quickly post the job). The job will be posted on our website for two weeks. We ask that faculty mentors consider all applications during this time period; many first and second years have never written a cover letter or resume before, and it takes them some time to get their materials together. You will likely get over 50% of your applications two hours before the deadline. Then, we will send you a list of all applicants, and you will have 1.5-2 weeks to evaluate and make a decision. We will run an eligibility check on your finalists to confirm they are a good fit for the program’s funding goals. You will provide us feedback on all applicants (we will guide you through this!), and we will take care of formally sending decisions through the application portal. In terms of timeline, the job search process happens very quickly because of the impending end of the quarter. 

Faculty may choose to hire two students, and each student has the potential to earn the full award amount ($1,625/100 hours in academic year). The award decision is made based on the whole application, so BOTH students must be eligible for the grant to be considered; separate decisions will not be made for individual students. If hiring two students, you should consider the scope of your project and how many hours are needed, as students need to be able to make informed financial decisions when accepting this grant.

When you open an application draft in the portal, there will be context text within each prompt to help you think about how to provide details that will yield a strong application. The application is broken into the following sections: faculty mentor information, project information, mentoring plan, funding support, and research assistant information. Faculty can only submit one application per grant cycle (with up to two student mentees). However, mentors are welcome to apply each cycle as long as they and their selected mentees still meet eligibility requirements. Strong applications provide enough information to the faculty review committee such that non-field experts understand the project goals and methodologies, role of the student, and how you will provide mentorship. Download a Word version of the application prompts.

• Log in with your NetID and Password.
• After log-in, you’ll see a table under the “My Applications” tab with any applications you have submitted, or students who have previously applied and indicated you as sponsor.  If you have never used this system, it will be empty.
• To begin a new application, click on “Discover Opportunities and Apply” tab, and look for open opportunities under the Office of Undergraduate Research header. You may need to click on “View All” to expand the view.
• If you have already begun a draft of the application for this cycle, you can access the draft through the “My Applications tab” and will be looking for an entry that has your name listed as the applicant, and the status listed as “proposal”. Click the “Edit Draft” button in the far right column.
• Draft and submit your proposal! You can hit the “Save Draft” button at the bottom of the application if you are not yet done responding.

Final Submission
When you submit the application (via the Submit button at the end of 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 email within 15 minutes of your successful submission.

Completion of application, if applying with pre-selected student(s). 
If you are applying with a pre-selected student, you will need enter the student’s NetID or email during the submission process, which will autopopulate the student’s name and email. The student(s) will receive an email within 15 minutes of your application submission asking them to submit their resume and cover letter. The student(s) will have a maximum of 24 hours after the application deadline to upload their supporting documents, otherwise the application will not be considered for review.

Applications are reviewed and ranked by a committee of faculty from across the university. Applications should, therefore, be written with a minimum of jargon and accessible to readers outside your discipline. The two main areas of review emphasis concern the mentoring plan and the appropriateness of the student for the program.  In terms of mentoring, the committee will be considering:

• To what extent is it clear what the student will be doing on a day-to-day basis?
• To what extent is it clear how the student will be trained to do this work?
• To what extent is it clear what skills the student will develop as a result of this opportunity?
• To what extent is it clear how these skills will prepare the student for more independent work in this field?
• To what extent does the student have opportunities to regularly receive feedback and engage with the faculty mentor?

This program focuses on students just getting started in research, so a student with experience already would not be a good match.  The rubric scores more highly for students who have few research-related skills and few formal releated experiences). Specifically, terms of student fit assessment, the committee will be considering:

• To what extent has the student already developed the research-related skills articulated in the student role and tasks? 
• To what extent does the student have formal related experience in the field (i.e., internships or research experience lasting more than a quarter)?
• To what extent does a pre-selected student articulate how they would benefit from this experience?
• To what extent is the faculty mentor seeking and prioritizing applicants with previous research-related skills if they are running an open search? 
• To what extent is the mentor seeking applicants in a search who can articulate how their interests relate and how they might benefit from this experience?

The committee rates applications according to the following criteria:

• There is a clear benefit to both the faculty and the student. The student is actively engaged in the research rather than doing mundane tasks like data entry or transcribing.
• The student does not have prior research experience in this field.
• The application outlines a clear and detailed mentoring plan, discussing how the faculty mentor will help the student develop their research skills.
• The faculty mentor would not otherwise be able to hire an RA because they have no available funding and/or undergraduates are not normally included in the research process: arts, humanities, and non-lab/field-based social sciences.  For faculty in the natural sciences, engineering, medical school, or lab/field-based social sciences, you need to make a detailed and compelling case for why no other funding is available to support RAs. If the faculty has hired undergraduate RAs before, the application explains why this particular student cannot be hired from the same funding source.

The final decision on what to fund rests with the faculty committee, not staff at the Office of Undergraduate Research. If you would like additional guidelines on how to apply or the level of detail needed in the application, please contact the URAP Coordinator. Faculty who discuss their application with staff at the Office of Undergrad Research ahead of time have a higher success rate! 

If a URAP student is work-study eligible (as denoted in their financial aid award letter accessible through CAESAR), then their URAP position will be converted to work-study. The student will be asked on the application if they are work-study eligible, and if so, they will be asked to share their work-study allotment. Please refer to the Work-Study website to determine eligibility and allotment.

Note: work-study allotment and eligibility do not impact likelihood of selection for this grant. Knowing the allotment helps us calculate how many additional hours the student might be able to earn beyond the URAP award amount.

Here is an overview of how that will work: work-study is a federal need-based financial aid program. At Northwestern, it is set up such that the government pays for 75% of the student’s hourly wage, and the department that hires the student pays the other 25%. Since the Office of Undergraduate Research is the hiring department for URAP jobs, we will cover the 25%, and there is no additional cost to the faculty mentor.

Of note, work-study allotments are typically more than the URAP award allotment, which means the student may: 1) hold more than one work-study job (and it is the mentee’s job to communicate this to the mentor if this is true), and/or 2) be eligible to earn additional URAP hours given their work-study allotment. The average work-study allotment is $3,600 which is around 221 possible URAP hours. Students are often eager to maximize their work-study income. Consequently, prior to the grant beginning, the student mentee and faculty mentor should have an honest conversation about the student’s goals and commitments regarding work-study position(s), and if the URAP job is a viable way for the student to earn additional hours. For example, if the faculty mentor only has about 100 hours of work (i.e., the initial URAP amount of $1,625 divided by $16.25/hr), the student can only earn a fraction of the $3,600 allotment, the student may pursue a second work-study job since many students financially depend on being able to earn the full allotment. Conversely, if the faculty mentor hopes to hire the student for 221 hours, but the student already has another work-study job with which they plan on splitting their time, it is important for the faculty member to know about realistic time expectations for their URAP research tasks. The federal work-study program caps the number of hours worked per week at 20 hours.

• New junior faculty who have not yet applied for major grants and who need RA help while they are setting up their first lab.
• Faculty who are initiating small, unfunded pilot projects that will later form the basis of a new NSF/NIH application.
• Faculty who are funded by grants that explicitly prohibit hiring of undergraduates (please be specific about funding source).

If you do have means to hire the student, we expect you to do so such that our office can focus on creating as many opportunities for students as possible.  There are often a number of resources in these disciplines wherein faculty can fund or subsidize undergraduates.

For example, if you have the means to hire undergraduates using your own funding, hiring students through work-study can be a very affordable option to hire a student. Many undergraduate students are awarded work-study as part of their financial aid package. Work-study money is earned through an hourly wage job on campus, and the hourly wage is 75% subsidized by the government. Therefore, hiring a paid research assistant for 8-10 hours a week for the academic year has total cost of about $875 to you, AND you provide a meaningful opportunity to students. Many work-study research assistants go on to apply for a Summer URG through our office to continue working for you! To learn more about the work-study hiring process, or post an available work-study job: Work-Study Information for Employers

Alternatively, you can easily apply for supplemental funding to your existing NSF or NIH funds specifically to fund undergraduates; this work often can be done with a call to your grant administrator, and it often requires a very short proposal with administrative shell; this funding is typically independent of the grant’s main budget, and it can be requested yearly.

• Students can begin working any time after November 1st IF they have submitted the appropriate payroll paperwork AND the position is visible in Workforce.
• Students can work more heavily in one quarter than another, pending their course load and agreement with the faculty sponsor.
• Students can work over breaks, if agreed upon with faculty sponsor.  Work cannot be conducted during exam periods.
• If they choose to space out the 100 hours, students often work 5-8 hours a week (see funding information above).
• Students CANNOT work more than 40 hrs/week; whether working for this job alone or in combination with another part-time campus job.
• Students must complete & log all hours by the last payroll deadline before Spring Exams begin. Please refer to your award email for specific dates. Hours must be logged AND annotated in Workforce.

The Office of Undergraduate Research hires students as Temp Employees, and students are paid an hourly wage of $16.25/hr. Students enter their hours in Workforce to get paid, and the faculty supervisor (or someone they designate) approves hours in Workforce as primary supervisor. Students cannot begin working until their timecard is visible in Workforce; typically the job is visible about a week after all payroll paperwork is submitted. Additional processes to complete payroll paperwork (like applying and receiving a social security number) may delay the potential start date. Full details on you award paperwork, payroll paperwork, and using Workforce to log/approve hours will be provided in your award emails.

All other questions are best asked of the Workforce help desk, as we are not experts in how this system works.

• Information and Links for the Workforce Timekeeping System
• Workforce Help Desk, Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm
  • Phone: 847-491-4700
  • Email: askHR@northwestern.edu

Students do not need to be work-study eligible in order to receive URAP funding.

If your student mentee is awarded work-study as part of their financial aid package, the URAP position will be converted to work-study.

HOWEVER, the average work-study allotment is between $3,000 and $4,000, which comes to about 200-260 hours of work (instead of the original AYURAP 100 hours). Not all faculty mentors may be able to provide that much work. Therefore, you as the faculty must confirm availability of additional hours prior to the student opting to use work-study money. If additional hours are not available, the student may wish to find a different job to earn the full allotment.

Students cannot simultaneously be paid for research assistant work while earning academic credit, so if the student prefers to receive academic credit, the student should apply for a 398/399 independent study. Enrollment in an independent student makes the student eligible to apply for an Academic Year Undergraduate Research Grant, which provides $1,000 towards research related expenses.

Yes, there is Conference Travel Grant program through our office that funds student presentations at conferences, exhibitions, or jury-selected performances. This grant funds 50% of expenses for student presentations (max $500).

The Office of Undergraduate Research will send you a mandatory post-grant survey to complete, and we will need to finalize our record of student hours. If there are any overages, we will bill you for hours beyond the grant limit.

If you have any success stories to share, please let us know! We’d love to feature your URAP project and mentee (and we love knowing about the impact of our grants! It helps us to advocate for more money in the future!)