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Summer Research Opportunities Programs

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Initiated in 1986 by the Graduate Deans of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) encourages talented underrepresented undergraduates to pursue graduate study, and subsequently, academic careers. At the University of Maryland, several colleges offer exciting summer research opportunities consistent with the SROP’s goal of increasing the number of underrepresented students in these programs.

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS)

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About the BSOS Summer Research Initiative:

The Summer Research Initiative (SRI) was created in 1999 by the Office of the Dean in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS). The program is designed to encourage and enhance the diversity of scholars working in social and behavioral science, practice, teaching, and policy fields. We are most interested in students who plan to pursue doctoral degrees in the behavioral and social sciences. A diverse science workforce enables us to improve the science, broaden its application, and facilitate novel and creative innovations and solutions by including scholars with unique backgrounds, life experiences, language skills, understandings of and access to underserved communities, diverse perspectives, etc.  Supporting diverse cohorts of students also enriches learning environments and is consistent with our university’s overall mission.  In that spirit, we are also especially interested in receiving applications from a broad spectrum of minoritized students, especially African Americans, Hispanic/Latine students, American Indian/Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, as well as from students whose research interests focus on and benefit diverse and underserved communities, or from any student who demonstrates that their particular diverse perspectives add to efforts to improve social and behavioral science.

The program provides rising juniors and seniors with an 8-week intensive experience to develop research skills, learn about doctoral training, and increase graduate training readiness. Departments involved in the SRI include African American StudiesAnthropologyCriminology & Criminal JusticeEconomicsGeographical SciencesGovernment & PoliticsHearing & Speech SciencesProgram in Neuroscience and Cognitive SciencePsychology, and Sociology.

The 2024 program dates are Monday, June 3, 2024 - Friday, July 26, 2024. All participants are required to arrive at our College Park campus on Saturday, June 1st for the required 2-day pre-program orientation. 

BSOS SRI Contacts: Please send questions to the BSOS SRI Coordinator, Brittney Robinson, brobins7@umd.edu.

IMPORTANT: BSOS SRI applicants must complete BOTH (1) the online BTAA SROP application and (2) the BSOS SRI supplemental application. For guidance on the supplemental application please use these materials as your guide:

All Big Ten Academic Alliance institutions share the same SROP online application, allowing you to apply to multiple programs with only one submission of your materials. To apply for an SROP program at the University of Maryland, please submit your application through the SROP Online Application, and be sure to choose the University of Maryland during that application process. The SROP Online Application will open on November 1, 2023 until February 10, 2024.

BSOS SRI Supplemental Application:

After completing the BIG Ten SROP online application, BSOS SRI applicants are required to submit a supplemental application. The supplemental application will ask a series of questions and require you to submit two documents - a current curriculum vitae (C.V.) or résumé and a personal statement. Before going online to complete your supplemental application, please review the SRI instructions.

ARHU Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) 2023: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade (Enslaved.org)

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College of Arts and Humanities Enslaved.org SROP 2023

June 5-July 21, 2023

College Park, MD and Palm Desert, CA

Faculty Mentors:

Daryle Williams, Research Professor of History and Co-PI, Enslaved.org

Kristina Poznan, Assistant Clinical Professor of History and Managing Editor, Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation

Quincy Mills, Associate Professor of History

Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade (Enslaved.org) is an open-source, open-access online discovery platform to explore the lives of the enslaved. The project, launched to the public in December 2020, is generously funded by the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other private and public funders who support the intersections of public humanities, data sciences, and inclusive academic pipeline development. In partnership with the University of Maryland’s Graduate School and the College of Arts and Humanities, Enslaved.org launched its first Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP) in 2021. 

The third iteration of the Enslaved.org SROP will be hosted at the University of Maryland and the University of California, Riverside. The 2023 cohort will participate in a seven-week (June 5-July 21, 2023) residential research experience, working closely with project faculty and partners to learn methods for data-informed historical research, develop a dataset to be published in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation related to history of enslavement and the recovery of enslaved lives in State of Maryland, and share their findings with academic and public audiences. 

Successful applicants will work closely with the program mentors, meet with various members of the Enslaved.org team, and participate in seminars to learn more about graduate studies and the application process. Meetings will vary between in-person and remote. Health and safety guidelines permitting, field experiences will include guided research opportunities in several libraries and archives, as well as visits to historic sites in regions surrounding College Park. The program ends with a five-day Scholars Institute, to be held at the UCR Palm Desert Center (Palm Desert, CA), culminating with a hybrid public presentation of research findings. 

Participants will receive a stipend to cover basic living expenses during the program. In addition, group housing in College Park and travel to and between research sites in Maryland/DC/Virginia are covered by the program, as well as transportation and accommodations for the Scholars Institute in Southern California, the week of July 17-21, 2023. 

Selection criteria will include undergraduate major and class standing, prior research experience, and an expression of interest in public humanities. 

The 2023 dates are June 5 - July 21. All participants are required to arrive at our College Park campus on Saturday, June 3rd, for the required 2-day pre-program orientation.

In addition to submitting a formal application at btaa.org/resources-for/students/srop/how-to-apply, applicants are encouraged to submit preliminary inquiries of interest with one or more of the following: 

Ralph Bauer, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Humanities bauerr@umd.edu

Daryle Williams, Lead Faculty  daryle@umd.edu
Kristina Poznan, Lead Faculty  kepoznan@umd.edu

Quincy Mills, Lead Faculty, qtmills@umd.edu


ARHU Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) 2023:
Recovering Democracy Archives: Speech Recovery Project

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College of Arts & Humanities SROP 2023:

Recovering Democracy Archives: Speech Recovery Project

Faculty Mentor: Shawn J. Parry-Giles, Professor, Department of Communication, the University of Maryland; Co-Editor, Recovering Democracy Archives: Speech Recovery Project; and Director, Rosenker Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership recoveringdemocracyarchives.umd.edu.

The mission of the Recovering Democracy Archives: Speech Recovery Project (RDA) is to create a digital archive of lesser-known but important public speeches that remain hidden within the vaults of archival repositories or in obscure anthologies and historical publications. RDA is particularly focused on recovering speeches delivered by those challenging barriers that restrict equitable participation in civic life or promote the expansion of civic deliberation.

RDA’s new initiative, Speaking for Social Justice (SSJP), is designed to increase the recovery, authentication, contextualization, and circulation of social justice speeches delivered by ordinary individuals, political activists, and progressive leaders. The aim is to recover, preserve, and circulate the voices of those fighting for greater economic, social, and political equalities at the local, regional, and national levels. Since the time of ancient Greece and Rome, rhetoric animated public and political life, and speeches advanced (and restricted) commitments to social justice. Even in our contemporary age of social media, social justice activists inside and outside of government use speeches as a means to expand civil rights and speak back to those trying to hinder such rights.

The aim of the RDA SROP project is to help students advance their skills in archival research, learn about the role of public speaking in civic life, hone their writing and research skills, expand their commitments to social justice and the public and digital humanities. Those completing research in support of RDA agree to create one speech unit for possible inclusion on the RDA website over the course of the summer of 2023. Each unit includes:

  • Recovering a social justice speech from an archives or historical record that promotes positive and progressive social change.
  • Authenticating the speech by comparing different (and available) speech versions to select the text that best captures the words delivered by the speaker in the rhetorical moment.
  • Researching and writing a one- to two-page contextualization of the speech that includes conducting archival research related to the speech, reviewing secondary scholarship about the speech and speaker, and exploring historical newspapers and databases that provide insight into the speaking situation, the rhetorical exigencies that gave rise to the speech, and its reception by those who listened to it or read it at the time of delivery.
  • Digitizing audio and video versions of the speech (if available) to recover and preserve the actual delivery of the speech and the audience’s reactions to it in real time.
  • Recovering photographs (if available) of the speaker and speaking context to help enliven the speaking situation.
  • Conducting edits to the speech unit with the possibility of publishing the speech and accompanying documents on RDA’s open-source website if selected for publication.
  • Providing research support for other RDA units as time allows.

Currently, the RDA website features over 40 speech units recovered from a diversity of archives. RDA contains lesser-known speeches by activists like César Chávez, Frederick Douglass, Paul Robeson, Gloria Steinem, and Rose Winslow who challenged the barriers that restrict equitable participation in civic life. RDA researchers have worked with such archives as the Arab American National Museum, the Cleveland State University Archives, the Jimmy Carter President Library, the Library of Congress, the George Meany Memorial AFL-CIO Archive, the Rainbow History Project Collection, the Social Welfare History Archives, and the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago.

In addition to submitting a formal application at https://btaa.org/resources-for/students/srop/how-to-apply, please email spg@umd.edu indicating your interest in the Recovering Democracy Archives: Speech Recovery Project specifically. Criteria include an expression of interest in the public and digital humanities.

The 2023 dates are June 5 - July 28. All participants are required to arrive at our College Park campus on Saturday, June 3rd, for the required 2-day pre-program orientation.

Email questions to:

Dr. Ralph Bauer - bauerr@umd.edu
Dr. Shawn Parry-Giles – spg@umd.edu

 


ARHU Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) 2023

The University of Maryland’s “1856” Project

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“Addressing the Past for a Liberated Future”

Lead Faculty Mentor: Christopher Bonner, Associate Professor, Department of History

The University of Maryland’s 1856 Project, in collaboration with the BSOS Summer Research  Initiative (SRI), and the Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) hosted by  College of Arts and Humanities, seeks rising juniors and seniors to participate in an 8-week (June 5-July 28, 2023) research internship. 1856 Project SRI/SROP scholars will work with the Maryland Libraries Special Collections and University Archives in the historical exploration of the slave economy and how slavery operated in the immediate vicinity of the Maryland Agricultural College (MAC, now the University of Maryland). Fellows will have the opportunity to utilize and uncover primary resources pertaining to the histories of the enslaved. The 1856 Project SRI/SROP scholars will work as part of a team led by Dr. Barnet Pavão-Zuckerman (Department of Anthropology), Dr. Christopher Bonner (Department of History), Dr. Quincy Mills (Department of History), Lae’l Hughes-Watkins (University Archivist) and Doug McElrath (Director, Special Collections & University Archives).

The 2023 dates are June 5 - July 28. All participants are required to arrive at our College Park campus on Saturday, June 3rd, for the required 2-day pre-program orientation.

In addition to submitting a formal application at btaa.org/resources-for/students/srop/how-to-apply, applicants are encouraged to submit preliminary inquiries of interest to the following: Ralph Bauer, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Humanities at bauerr@umd.edu,  Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, University Archivist, at laelhwat@umd.edu, and Christopher Bonner, Associate Professor of History at cjbonner@umd.edu.

 

College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (AGNR)

Summer Opportunities in Agricultural Research and the Environment (SOARE)

AGNR SROP

The Summer Opportunities in Agricultural and the Environment (SOARE) is a partnership between the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (AGNR), The Big Ten Alliance Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP), and The UMD Graduate School. SOARE is a gateway to graduate education. The program aims to increase the number of underrepresented students pursuing graduate study and research careers in agricultural, environmental, nutrition and food science, and natural resource areas of study. SOARE provides underrepresented undergraduate students with on-campus research experience to establish important relationships with faculty in their respective fields of study and to conduct graduate-level research under the supervision of a renowned AGNR faculty member.  Our new summer research program, SOARE: Strategic Work in Applied Geosciences (SWAG), is geared towards undergraduates with interest in geology (i.e., mineralogy, geomorphology, petrology), earth science (i.e., geology plus chemistry, physics computations, environmental science, geography, hydrology/marine science, atmospheric science), natural resources management and soil science.

Students participating in the SOARE and SOARE: SWAG will spend ten weeks at UMD working closely with AGNR faculty members as part of their research teams. Students are expected to spend about forty hours per week working with their research teams and to be contributing members. Participants will attend weekly seminars to learn more about the graduate school experience, the graduate school application process as well as social activities during their stay. At the end of the ten weeks, students will have produced tangible results from experimental research and will report the results in a special research forum. Participants will also become acquainted with the culture of graduate school and learn what is needed and expected of them as graduate students in their respective disciplines.

The 2024 program dates are May 20, 2024 - July 26, 2024.

AGNR SOARE Contact: Email questions to Dr. Evelyn Cooper and Dr. Candice Duncan, Director, and Co-Director, at umdsoare@umd.edu

IMPORTANT: UMD AGNR SOARE and SOARE: SWAG applicants must complete the online application at https://forms.gle/9Va4et7MvbvUvEKo6

 

School of Public Health (SPH)

SPH Summer Training and Research (UM STAR)

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The School of Public Health’s Summer Training and Research (SPH UM STAR) Program was launched in 2008 with funding from the National Institute of Health's National Health Lung and Blood Institute.

UM STAR is designed to provide traditionally underrepresented undergraduate students with two consecutive summers of a 10-week research training and career development program to enhance their potential to apply for and complete graduate degrees in biomedical and behavioral science relevant to preventing and treating cardiovascular disease. 

The 2024 program dates are: Monday, June 3, 2024 - Friday, August 9, 2024.

SPH UM STAR Contacts: Email questions to: umstar@umd.edu / 301-405-2487 (Dr. James Hagberg, Director) 

Advantages and Benefits of Participating
  • Increase your knowledge of doctoral-level training.
  • Mentoring, networking, and enrichment opportunities through a faculty mentor, graduate students, fellow program participants, and professionals working on campus and throughout the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.   
  • Lectures and workshops to enhance your knowledge of the graduate application process, assist you with negotiating the academic rigors of graduate school, and help develop your career path.
  • For SRI Program only, provides: round-trip travel, room and board in University on-campus housing, and $3,150 (before taxes).
  • For UM STAR program only, provides: round-trip travel, room and board in University on-campus housing, and $4800 (before taxes).
  • Graduate application fee waivers available for all participants.
  • Take advantage of our close proximity to Baltimore and Washington, DC - our nation’s capital.
  • The area supports a vibrant science and policy environment given the local network of universities and professional and scientific organizations.
  • A very large and diverse group of college students converge on the DC metropolitan area for summer internships.
  • Convenient and easy to use local transportation via an extensive subway and bus system.
  • Visit historic, social, and cultural offerings in Washington, DC; Baltimore; Annapolis; and beyond. Great diversity of people and events held throughout the summer. It’s exciting here in the summer.
  • Our campus is just a 2-hour drive from the beach or the mountains, and a short train ride away from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City.
Who Should Apply

Applicants interested in BSOS SRI, AGNR SOARE, and SPH UM-STAR should meet ALL of the following requirements:

  • Be U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the United States
  • Be enrolled full-time at an accredited four-year higher education institution and obtain junior or senior status by the Fall 2024 academic year
  • Possess an excellent academic record including a 3.0 or better cumulative GPA
  • Be interested in pursuing graduate study in one of the offered SROP programs at UMD
  • Completion of the SRI or SOARE supplemental application which will require applicants to submit a current résumé or curriculum vitae
  • Please note: Priority is given to summer applicants who intend to pursue a research doctorate

Please see department websites for specific faculty research interests, additional eligibility information, and important program information: BSOS SRIAGNR SOARE, and SPH UM-STAR

How to Apply: 

All Big Ten Academic Alliance institutions share the same SROP online application, allowing you to apply to multiple programs with only one submission of your materials. To apply for an SROP program at the University of Maryland, please submit your application through the SROP Online Application, and be sure to choose the University of Maryland during that application process. The SROP Online Application is open from November 1, 2023, through February 10, 2024. 

Supplemental SROP Applications for UMD programs

After completing the BIG Ten SROP online application, BSOS SRI and AGNR SOARE applicants are required to submit a supplemental application. The supplemental application will ask a series of questions and require you to submit two documents - a current curriculum vitae (C.V.) or résumé and a 500-1500 word personal statement. Both of these documents must be prepared in a PDF file format. The supplemental application information can be found on the individual SROP program pages. Before going online to complete your supplemental application, please review the instructions SRI and SOARE. 

AGNR SOARE Personal Statement AND Essay Instructions

UMD SROP Program Dates & Application Deadlines

BSOS SRI 2024 June 3, 2024 - July 26, 2024
SPH UM STAR 2024 June 3, 2024 - August 9, 2024
ARHU SROP 2023 June 6, 2023 - July 24, 2023
AGNR SOARE 2024 May 20, 2024 - July 26, 2024
BIG 10 SROP Online Application Deadline February 10, 2024
UMD Supplemental Application Deadline (SRI & SOARE) February 10, 2024

Contact Information

Contact gradschool@umd.edu / 301-405-3644 with questions about UMD Graduate School.
Contact the SROP program directly for specific questions regarding BSOS SRI, SOARE, ARHU SROP, or UM STAR. 

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