Undergraduate Research in Scientific Advancement

The URSA Research Program is an interdisciplinary program pairing freshman and sophomore undergraduates with research mentors. The general goal of the program is to encourage underclassmen to explore research at an early stage in their academic careers. The program pairs up undergraduate students with a graduate student or professor mentor. Each group will decide on a project to work on throughout the semester. All undergraduate mentees will write a 1-2 page summary and give a presentation at the end of each semester on what they have done/learned. Mentors benefit since URSA is flexible with their schedules, providing them undergraduate researchers with the desired skill set and inspirations who make great early additions to a research team. The structure of URSA, including events such as the presentation workshop, also trains mentees about the discipline of engineering research.