Overview
The Student-Mentor Academic Research Teams (SMART) committee will again run an expanded Summer Fellowship Program this year. As in previous summers, fellowship winners will receive either $2250 for 5 full weeks (200 hours) or $4500 for 10 full weeks (400 hours) of research or creative activity. In addition, the student-mentor team may jointly apply for up to $2000 in additional supporting funds. Fellowship winners will also qualify for travel funding to a regional or national conference or equivalent event to present their project results. The SMART committee anticipates being able to fund as many as 10 students this year, depending on the sizes of budgets requested.
Program Description
The main purpose of the SMART Summer Fellowship Program is to allow students the opportunity to experience full-time work on a major research project or other type of creative activity under the close supervision of a faculty mentor. Project topics may range across the disciplines, from experiments in the sciences to performances in the arts. Each student is expected to be actively supervised by a faculty mentor, where the type of supervision will vary by discipline and could include, for example, consultation and guidance on an independent project generated by the student or working with the mentor on a specific part of the mentor's own research or creative activities.
Each fellowship will be for $2250 for 5 full weeks (200 hours) or $4500 for 10 full weeks (400 hours) of work on the project. These funds go directly to the student in installments paid over the course of the project. Students and mentors may submit a supplementary budget request to support mentoring and project activities. Requirements for the Summer Fellowships are the following:
- The student must be an undergraduate at IU South Bend above the freshman level, with a GPA of at least 2.5.
- A faculty member must endorse the project and closely mentor the student.
- A completed proposal (see guidelines below) must be submitted in electronic format by the due date. See application below.
- All appropriate research compliance requirements (eg, animal, biosafety, and human subject approval) must be addressed in the application.
- A final report of project results must be submitted before the student will be able to receive the final installment of the fellowship stipend. This final report should be prepared in consultation with the mentor and may take several forms, but at the minimum, it should outline the work that the student has accomplished (eg, activities, results, performances) as a result of SMART funding.
A list of past awards and some sample proposals are available online; please recognize that the proposals were submitted under previous rules for the program, some of which were changed in 2016.
For more information, please contact committee chair, Andy Schnabel (574-520-4413), or Contracts and Grants Coordinator, Erika Zynda (574-520-4181).