UGRA Research Mentor Designation Form

Purpose of This Form

Please fill out the following form if you are a KU employee who is wanting to sponsor a student's Undergraduate Research Award application who is not a tenured or tenure-track faculty member. Graduate students are not eligible to be the primary mentor on an UGRA proposal.

Besides faculty, there are a variety of employees at the University who have the content knowledge and methodological expertise needed to mentor an undergraduate student's research/creative project. For these employees, there are specific considerations you might want to discuss with your supervisor to prevent issues down the road.  If relevant, please discuss the following topics with your supervisor, and then fill out the form below to register yourself as someone who can sponsor an UGRA proposal.  You only need to fill out this form once, and we will keep your name on file for any future UGRA student applications.  An auto-generated email will be sent to you and your supervisor.

Points of discussion:

Evaluation/Workload: 

Does mentoring undergraduate researchers factor in to the evaluation criteria for this position?  If so, how should this work be reported?  If an hourly employee, should the time spent mentoring undergraduates be considered part of the normal work week schedule, or something done in addition to this?  

***Research mentors and their supervisors should be clear about the degree to which mentoring an undergraduate research project can be considered a part of normal work responsibilities and whether it should be included in the person’s evaluation criteria.

Possible funding conflicts: 

Will mentoring undergraduate researchers conflict with any funding sources for the mentor’s position (i.e. research grants, postdoctoral researcher funding lines, etc.)?

IRB approval: 

What should the procedure be if a student’s project will require IRB approval? 

***KU generally requires that a tenured or tenure-track faculty member signs off on all IRB applications, so you might discuss who the research mentor would work with if approval is needed.  All questions about IRB approval can be directed to the Office of Research.