The University of North Carolina at Pembroke Undergraduate Research and Creativity Center provides introductory undergraduate student research opportunity funding through the Student Scholarship Support (S3) grants. These small grants can be used to cover the cost of supplies or related expenses for extracurricular, faculty-mentored research/creative endeavors, and all other beneficial research activities as defined by and agreed upon by PURC and the faculty mentors. These funds cannot be used to cover the cost of class projects or assignments.
AVAILABLE FUNDING/LIMITATIONS:
The maximum request amount for a S3 is $800. Requests are due by the 1st of each month, with award announcement by month’s end. Summer S3 proposals must be submitted by the end of April. As funds are awarded on a first come, first serve basis, early applications are highly encouraged.
STUDENT SCHOLARSHIP SUPPORT APPLICATION PROCEDURES:
- Applicants must be in good academic standing in an undergraduate degree program at the time of application.
- Proposal must be approved by the faculty mentor before proposal submission.
- Proposal must be student-authored. Proposals that appear fully or partially faculty authored will not be considered.
- Students may not use AI to write PURC proposals, either fully or partially, as the writing and editing involved is integral to the learning process. Proposals fully or partially generated by AI will not be considered for funding. All submitted proposals will be verified for AI authorship by PURC.
- Proposals must clearly discuss the benefit to the student, department, university and community (as applicable).
- Funds must be used for research and scholarship only as identified in the approved and submitted grant application.
- Only two applications per investigator per semester, and one application per project, is allowed.
- All funds must be spent within the fiscal year of application.
S3 ASSESSMENT AND AWARDS:
- Each S3 grant request will be evaluated by the PURC office and may be referred to the PURC Council for consultation.
- Award sizes are based upon availability of funds and previous student support.
- The PURC office reserves the right to fund proposals at a reduced amount if insufficient funds exist to support all applications of merit.
- All grant applications will be evaluated using the PURC rubric (see below).
S3 APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:
Email the following in PDF format to purc@uncp.edu (Incomplete, non-PDF or paper-only applications will be returned without review):
- Completed PURC cover sheet (see below) with faculty mentor approval and signature.
- A statement that describes your proposed research/creative activity, thesis or project. Please limit this portion of the application to 1 to 1.5 pages:
- For beginning research: purpose, hypothesis, significance, your role in a larger project (if applicable) and methodology;
- For ongoing research: purpose, hypothesis, significance, your role in a larger project (if applicable) methodology, preliminary results;
- For creative activity: purpose, significance, medium, anticipated venues for presentation/performance
3. A detailed budget justification, to include :
- detailed project costs, including all items with links
- amount requested
- other sources of funding (existing or sought)
4. A brief discussion of how the proposed activity will benefit the student, university, department and community (as applicable).
DUE DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: Applications are due by the 1st of each month until available funds are expended. As funds are awarded on a first come, first serve basis, early applications are highly encouraged. All applications must be submitted in PDF format.
POST AWARD REQUIREMENTS:
- All funded students are required to present their work at the PURC Symposium in the Spring of each year. Students that do not complete this requirement become ineligible for future PURC funding.
- A one-page written report summarizing the results of the project must be submitted to the PURC Center Director by end of the award period.