CSSS Undergraduate Research Support Grants

View past Undergraduate Research Support awards:

Next Call for Applications will be in early SPRING Qtr 2010

The Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences (CSSS) announces a new funding mechanism that will support undergraduate students working on faculty research projects. The goal is to help faculty incorporate undergraduate students in meaningful ways in research at the intersection of statistics and the social sciences. Each undergraduate research support grant will provide funding for up to three undergraduate students working on research that advances the mission of CSSS. Although we encourage collaborative research across disciplines - particularly between statisticians and social scientists - such collaboration is not a formal requirement of the program.

Priority will be given to applications that:

  1. involve undergraduates in research at the cutting edge of the development of statistical methods for social scientific problems;
  2. provide undergraduates with opportunities to make meaningful and varied contributions to the research process;
  3. describe how undergraduate students will gain the training and support necessary for them to make meaningful contributions to the project.

Awards will be in the range of $3,000-5,000, with the bulk of the budget dedicated to undergraduate research support (typically hourly pay). We anticipate making up to five awards.

Eligibility:

Faculty holding the following ranks at the time of the award are eligible to apply: Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, Research Professor, Research Associate Professor, and Research Assistant Professor. Faculty with acting appointments at the time of the award may be eligible and should contact the Associate Director in advance of submitting a proposal. A PI may submit only one proposal per round. A proposal that is not funded may be resubmitted in a later round only if it is substantially revised or if the review committee recommends resubmission.

Research Project Requirements:

Research projects must use statistical methods to address a social scientific problem. Strong proposals will use innovative statistical methods to address cutting-edge social scientific research questions, and will involve undergraduate students in a meaningful way. Collaborative interdisciplinary research such as between a social scientist and a statistician is encouraged but not required. Any senior personnel funded by the grant are expected to participate regularly in the CSSS Seminar Series, both by attending and by giving at least one seminar on the project topic. The proposal should indicate which member(s) of the research team will be the primary seminar participants.