Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Investigations
Undergraduate Summer Scholar Program

The Undergraduate Summer Scholar Program offers Dominican’s highest level of undergraduate research funding support. In the past two years, three Undergraduate Summer Scholars have received funding through the URSCI office.

The typical summer scholar student receives a $2,000 stipend and a tuition waiver for three academic credits of undergraduate research (e.g., PSYC 495). Any Dominican undergraduate student in good standing who has completed his or her sophomore or junior year can apply to be a Summer Scholar. Sponsoring faculty members must be full-time members of the undergraduate or graduate faculty at Dominican University.  Mentors receive a $500 stipend for their oversight of their student's project.

Scholar selection is based on the student’s academic merit and the quality of the proposed scholarly project. Scholarship recipients are required to present their independent scholarly and creative work at the annual URSCI Expo the following April.

The 2012 USSP awards were announced at the URSCI Expo on April 4.  The awardees are:
Corey McClure, a photography student, is using his award to travel around the Mid-Western U.S. in order to visit five National Parks or Forests, which he will document through photography and journalism. Corey will draw on his experience and knowledge as a photography student to develop his skills in natural/landscape photography. The images and journals will serve the purpose of attempting to answer questions about nature, such as what is nature, how does it influence our lives, how is it separate from technological society and why have we chosen to preserve it in nationally protected parks? Corey will analyze the work of Howard Kunstler, Peter Henry Emerson and Fox Talbot as resources for his work. Corey's faculty mentor is Javier Carmona, Art, who will collaborate on Corey's work by critiquing his photographs.

 

Emmajane Thompson's research will investigate a specific teaching method, rival to that of the current teaching paradigm, that has been shown to positively influence student performance. The teaching model is called defensive pessimism, and is characterized as a strategy used by individuals to avoid failure. When introduced to a stressful situation, individuals can respond by adopting one of two strategies: achieve success or avoid failure. Defensive pessimism adopts the latter strategy, and is useful in that the individual sets their expectations so low, that they convince themselves they will fail, and as a result become highly motivated to avoid that failure. Working with Tracy Caldwell, Psychology, as her mentor, Emmajane will eventually present her work at the URSCI Expo in April of 2013, and will also submit her work for publication in a reseach journal.

 

As a condition of the award, Corey and Emmajane will present their projects at the 2013 URSCI Expo in April of 2013.

 

For a complete list of previous USSP awards, click here.

 

USSP Application