TAMS Summer Research Scholarships for juniors entering their senior year of study
Pending the availability of funds, TAMS will award a significant number of TAMS Summer Research Scholarships to encourage your participation, under the guidance of a faculty mentor, in varied research environments. Beyond your capacity to locate a professor who is willing to supervise either ongoing or new research this summer, such factors as GPA, intensity and length of past research, existing outcomes—co-authorship, for example, of manuscripts under submission; or in press; or already-published—will figure in our deliberations, as will TAMS disciplinary reports and other indicators of social maturity. As there will likely be fewer scholarships than there will be applicants, disappointment will inevitably surface. Applicants should understand that they cannot expect TAMS to offer explanations that involve comparative assessment of other students’ credentials. Nor should applicants expect explanations that may emerge as a subjective “call” between or among the merits of various applicants. Such policy is in accord with any number of selection processes, admission to TAMS itself being among those.
These scholarships are, in the main, for TAMS juniors who are heading into their senior year at TAMS. In rare cases, and with compelling rationale, a TAMS scholarship may go to a graduating senior.
Where do I look if I am not currently conducting research that will continue into the summer?
• Consider approaching a professor with whom you have studied, and with whose research project you are familiar. See if that PI will take you on.
• For broader UNT research opportunities, visit departmental web sites and explore the research interests of several faculty members. Then, during office hours, visit one or more of these professors to discuss the possibility of your joining their research team for the summer, and perhaps longer.
• Talk with TAMS seniors and other juniors who may have worked with the professor on research projects.
• Several TAMS students traditionally end up with summer-research mentors at other universities. Please see regulations below.
What about getting paid? You do not have to get paid for working with a research scientist on a project. The experience and privilege of interacting closely with a professional will be invaluable. Keep in mind that you are learning the methodology that your mentor uses to advance “enquiry” and thereby advance new knowledge. Those benefits, along with your acquiring “the discipline of the discipline” will serve you well in later intellectual and professional challenges.
• That said, you will nonetheless receive a $3000 scholarship, spread over 2 payments, to help meet your summer expenses.
• Accepting a TAMS Summer Research Scholarship requires full-time participation in the ten-week summer session (June 4-August 10). Exceptions will be rare and will not include your wish to take advantage of family travel plans, or other commitments falling short of documented illness or bereavement leave of absence.
• UNT-based Summer-Research-Scholarship holders must register and pay for at least one semester-credit-hour (preferably HNRS 3996) that reflects guided study or research within the department sponsoring your research. If your UNT research professor demands that you take three semester-credit hours, within his/her department, then so be it. Either way, we request that you obtain the professor’s approval to enroll for those hours on a Pass/Fail basis, as the summer-research experience is not about earning still one more “A”; at stake, rather, are the enchantment, discipline, and outcomes accompanying the adventure of research.
• If you conduct summer research at UNT, but without having received a TAMS Summer Research Scholarship, you must still enroll in a UNT one-semester credit-hour course, at your own expense.
• If you conduct research at other universities, you must still enroll in, and pay for, HNRS 3996, a UNT one-semester credit-hour, P/F course.
Additional Rules and Expectations:
• Students who earn Summer Research Scholarships must carry health insurance, either through their family, or through the family’s independent purchase of insurance for the student.
• There will be no research-mentor hopping. To receive the scholarship, you must work exclusively in the lab of the research mentor with whom you entered into covenant as part of the scholarship application process. The days of “dropping” one professor, picking up another, and retaining the scholarship are over. Nor may you work in two labs concurrently, if you hold a TAMS Summer Scholarship, or reside off campus. All Summer Research Scholarship recipients must reside on campus, even if your parents are willing to drop you off and pick you up at day’s end.
• Scholarship recipients may not switch labs at any time during the 10-week summer session.
• Students must abide by all University and TAMS rules, regulations, and policies. Any violation of these may result in summer-session or general TAMS dismissal, and with your having to reimburse the full value of the scholarship.
• Scholarship recipients will hold no external employment—on weekdays or on weekends. You are already being paid to conduct research.
• Students may have to conduct research on weekends, at the discretion of their research mentors, save for time taken, if desired, for religious observance or National Holidays.
• All recipients of TAMS Summer Research Scholarships must prepare posters for presentation at Scholars Day, in April 2019, and write a one-page, single-spaced report, due August 7, 2018 summarizing—in terms that a generalist is capable of understanding—the nature of your research and contribution. Your professor must sign the report to indicate his/her approval of its contents and expression.
• If students cease conducting research or do not display consistent devotion to their lab or team responsibilities, they may lose their scholarship and have to reimburse whatever segment of the scholarship they have already spent.
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