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The Chancellor's Undergraduate Research Award (CURA) is administered by the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) to support undergraduate involvement in research and other creative and scholarly activities across campus.
The CURA program is intended to both assist UIC faculty members in the completion of research, scholarship or creative production and to provide a rich and rewarding educational experience for the student employee. You can read more about the program at https://cura.uic.edu/.
CURA supports faculty who work with students who have already accepted Federal Work Study (FWS) as part of this coming academic year's financial aid package.
The award covers the portion of the student researcher's wages not paid for by the federal government under Federal Work Study. Based on the past academic year, we estimate that 75% of the student's wages will come from the Federal Work Study funds granted to our campus and the remaining 25% will be covered by the CURA program, through a transfer of funds to the sponsoring department after the academic year has ended. Thus, CURA affords an opportunity to hire an undergraduate student researcher at no cost to faculty or the sponsoring department. Thanks to the backing of university leadership, last year CURA funded approximately 160 student-faculty collaborations at no cost to faculty or their departments.
If you are not sure whether you have received FWS, please visit the Office of Financial Aid. If you have not received FWS as part of your financial aid package, you can contact the Office of Financial Aid and request that you be considered for FWS; you should specify that the FWS request is in connection with a CURA research position.
To participate in the CURA program, your faculty member with whom you are doing research will need to complete an online application on behalf of you (the student) at https://cura.uic.edu/information-for-faculty/.
Awards are available for one semester or the entire academic year. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis in the order in which they are received. Each faculty member may apply to support up to three CURA students during an academic year. CURA is not intended to be combined with other major campus-based research funding programs such as LASURI, Honors College research grants, etc., other than to the extent that such awards will meet additional expenses unmet by CURA.
Applications will be accepted until the fall CURA fund is depleted or the end of the fourth week of the fall semester, whichever comes first. A spring semester application cycle will open in November.
If you do not yet have research but are interested in CURA and are looking for opportunities, you can search in the UIC Undergraduate Research Experience database to find faculty supervisors and mentors: www.ure.uic.edu.
If you have questions of your own, please feel free to email us in the Office of Undergraduate Research at our@uic.edu.
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