MUR Guidelines

The Mentored Undergraduate Researcher program within the School of Education at Brigham Young University provides opportunities for undergraduate students to work with faculty mentors on joint research projects.

These research projects should conform to the following standards, created by the Office of Research and Creative Activities (ORCA) for Mentoring Environments grants:

1. Students should have access to faculty (and/or mentoring teams) for sufficient time to allow development of personal and professional relationships.
2. Students should be involved in programs and processes wherein scholarship and/or central academic activities in its several forms constitutes the core of their experiences.
3. Students should be given the opportunity for growth in skills and increase in responsibility in the project or experience involved.
4. Students should be provided opportunity and examples for integration of spiritual and secular understanding.
5. Mentored experiences should be pertinent to future situations of the students involved and ideally would assist the students in attaining the “next level” of their chosen disciplines.
6. Mentoring environments may facilitate faculty development and should contribute to the university in meaningful ways.
7. Where appropriate, students should become co-authors or co-creators of some significant work.

See the Proposal Guidelines for a more complete description of the criteria which will be used to prioritize proposals for funding.

Most students work 5-10 hours a week as a MUR during Winter and Fall semesters, including time that they are being mentored. Some, in consultation with the faculty mentor, may decide to work fewer hours during those semesters so they can work a few hours during Spring and/or Summer terms as well. Only 300 total hours per year are budgeted for each student who works more than one semester. For this effort, students will be paid the basic university student rate (most students start with the beginning BYU student rate and work up the longer they participate in this program). From these efforts students will experience the excitement and frustration of research first hand. They should become a co-author of reports and papers. They will be expected to work on the project for at least one full semester and sign an agreement with their mentor professor, which clearly spells out the products or tasks which the student agrees to complete and how long they will work with the professor.

Because this is an academic program, students who participate must register for a 2-3 credit seminar, depending on the students' schedule and the number of credits they want to earn (IP&T 470, section 1, #05669) both Winter and Fall semesters (assuming they want to work both). The class will not meet during Spring or Summer.

During this class, the instructor (David Williams) will provide overviews of research purposes and methods and will involve the students and their professor mentors in presenting their projects to the class (what the research problem and purpose are, methods used, plans for publishing, role of the student, role of the professor as mentor, and so on). Students will also be expected to complete some short writing assignments on Blackboard throughout the Winter and Fall semesters.

Faculty and students are invited to apply by October 31 for participation in the program the following calendar year so students can plan their schedules and faculty can plan their projects better. Funding decisions will be made by mid-November so faculty can use the rest of Fall semester to recruit the student(s) they want to work with. Students may hear of this project and contact Dr. Williams. He will refer them to the faculty proposals which will be posted online and students will be invited to contact faculty they are interested in working with. However, the ideal way of identifying students for most faculty has been through their own classes and other student contacts