Institutional partners are universities that are committed to scaling undergraduate research.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis for the spring term.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the eligibility requirements to become an institutional partner?
Any North American university that is willing to invest time, energy, and resources to increase their research capacity and can commit to our expectations is eligible to apply to participate.
Can Canadian schools apply to be institutional partners?
Yes, Canadian schools are eligible to apply as institutional partners. We have previously partnered with the University of Waterloo and the University of Alberta.
Are non-CS computing departments eligible to be institutional partners? Can students from these departments participate in the program?
Maybe. This program is open to departments/schools and students focusing in computing fields, including computer science, computer engineering, and information science. Other fields not housed in one of the departments listed here will be considered on a case by case basis.
Can the local coordinator be a staff member rather than a faculty member?
Yes, the local coordinator does not have to be a faculty member, but must be able to reach and communicate with local faculty, students, and departmental leaders.
When will institutional partner applicants be notified about the status of their application?
In general, applications for institutional partners are reviewed and evaluated on a rolling basis.
We plan to evaluate each application within a few weeks of its submission.
If you have not heard from a member of our team, please contact ur2phd@cra.org
The institutional partner application form asks about our recruitment strategy. What does this refer to?
This question is specifically asking about the recruitment strategy for the students who would be engaged in the UR2PhD program.
However, we hope that departments would also be committed to engaging women and gender-marginalized individuals in their other research positions.
The institutional partner application requirements specify the need to recruit 20+ new undergraduate researchers. Is this a strict requirement?
When we launched the program, we were looking to engage departments that could engage at least 20 students per term. We expected most institutional partners to be large universities, with hundreds of undergraduate students.
However, we are open to partnering with any institution that is committed to supporting undergraduate researchers – especially those who are underrepresented in computing.
Beginning in 2025, to be considered an institutional partner, a department must have at least 6-9 women or gender marginalized undergraduate students successfully complete the Undergraduate Research Training Course in a calendar year.
If those numbers seem unattainable, we encourage you to connect with us to brainstorm how you may be able to attract, recruit, and support students from underrepresented populations.
If institutional partnerships seem unlikely, students are also able to apply in groups. Details about student participation can be found under the undergraduate research training course page
What are the consequences of institutional partners not meeting the 80% threshold of students from underrepresented populations?
This is a goal and we will provide suggestions for how institutional partners can meet the goal.
We expect that partners will commit to following practices that are likely to meet that goal (e.g. advertising, branding, selection processes), but there are no consequences, per se, for falling short if best efforts are made.
What is the involvement of faculty and staff at institutional partners during the undergraduate research training course?
To learn more about the expectations for faculty mentors of participants of the undergraduate research training course, please refer to the Faculty Mentor Expectations page.
Generally speaking, the undergraduate research training course is intended to be a student’s first introduction to research. CRA will provide training for students to learn foundational research skills. While the local institution provides either course credit or pay to the students for their participation. All undergraduate students engaged in the program will need to have a research advisor to mentor them on their research project, and this will need to be a faculty member and/or a graduate student.
Institutions do not need to create a separate course with an instructor, but we understand that the university might require a local course number and an instructor of record who also engages in some minimal number of hours with students.
CRA has budgeted funding for each institutional partner to designate a “local coordinator.” The local coordinator will run the student selection and placement process, make sure that the students are keeping up with the research methods course and their research projects, deal with any issues that arise with the students in the program, answer administrative questions about academic credit or pay, etc. They will not need to be mentoring students on a research project.
What requirements do students need to meet to participate in the undergraduate research training course?
Students will need to have (1) a research team, (2) a research advisor, and (3) availability to attend the same course section as their teammates. Research teams should be groups of 2-4 undergraduate students working on a computing research project. Students must attend the same section as their teammates.
How do the undergraduate students get involved in the research? What are their research topics?
To participate in the research methods course, students need to have a research team, project and mentor at their local university.
Local coordinators can either have students identify projects and mentors on their own, or they can decide to match students to faculty/projects.
Are “homework assignments” assessments related to participant’s research project?
All assignments are related to participant’s research projects e.g, write an abstract, conduct a literature review, etc.
To view a full list of assignments, please see the resources tab.
Can students drop out of the program after the first semester/quarter?
Students are expected to commit to the program in its entirety.
It is our hope that students will complete the course, which culminates in a research proposal and presentation. And that they will then spend the next term implementing their research proposal.
When will the undergraduate research training course begin?
In 2024, we will be offering the course in the summer and the fall. In 2025, we will be offering sessions in the spring, summer, and fall.
To see full schedules, please refer to the undergraduate research training course page.
What does it mean to be a cohort?
A cohort is the set of undergrads across different schools taking the online research methods course together. Our cohorts are based on the term in which the students participated (e.g. Fall 2023, Summer 2024, and Fall 2024 cohorts)
UR2PhD: Undergraduate Research Methods Course by Computing Research Association’s UR2PhD Program. This work, “UR2PhD Undergraduate Research Methods Course”, is adapted from “Early Research Scholars Program” by Christine Alvarado, UC San Diego, used under CC BY 4.0. “UR2PhD Undergraduate Research Scholars” is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the Computing Research Association’s UR2PhD Program and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
UR2PhD: Graduate Student Mentor Training Course by Computing Research Association’s UR2PhD Program is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
