The Office of Undergraduate Research will once again sponsor the TruScholars Summer Undergraduate Research Program during the summer of 2011. The purpose of the TruScholars program is to foster collaborative faculty-student research to enhance student learning and promote the culture of research, scholarship, and creative activities at Truman. Projects supported by this program should exhibit the potential for scholarly publication, presentation at a regional or national conference, or creative performance. Up to 25 students will be supported as TruScholars in 2011.

The formal part of the 2011 TruScholars program will coincide with the eight-week Summer Semester, beginning June 6 and ending July 29, 2011. During this time, students should devote full-time effort to their project and faculty mentors should be continuously available for consultation and collaboration. There are no restrictions, however, against completing additional work for the research project outside of the formal program period.

This sounds AWESOME! I spend the majority of my time researching subjects tangential to class. Having a professor to interact with in a capacity like this is exactly what I need to help challenge and focus myself.

Proposal Deadlines are due Feb 4. I want to have a couple rough proposals thrown together before the end of this break.

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Proposal Criteria

Selection Criteria
Applications will be reviewed by the Office of Student Research Steering Committee, and students and mentors will be informed of the success of their application by late February, 2011. Applications will be ranked according to quality on each of the following criteria (not necessarily in the following order):

Overall quality of the project description, including how well the goals, rationale, and research plan are articulated.

The potential of the project to provide educational value to the student and/or new insights into the discipline.

The suitability and preparation of the student for the project.

Recommendation letters submitted by faculty/staff.

The demonstrated ability of the faculty member to successfully mentor undergraduate research/scholarship projects.

Availability of the mentor to the student during the TruScholars Program period.

I'm a Major in Communication with a minor in Asian Studies. I've given myself the next couple days to brainstorm. I'll write down ideas I have & a ditty on them, I'm looking for feedback or new ideas.

If you have an idea, say it. If you have anything to add, add it. The purpose of this process to to encourage as much breadth in thought as possible. Whether or not you think its stupid if it leads to new thoughts its worth it.

Here are some general ideas I have so far.

Atheism & Politics
-Mobilizing Atheist Vote
-Church & State
-Militant Atheists
-Atheism and Society

Science + Religion
-Cataclysms of Faith
-Religion and Grades
-Inspiring Power of Science
-Raised with Religion -- Impingement of Rights

Space
-The Case for Space
-Encouraging Cosmology in the US

Education
-Evaluative Learning vs. Learning Process
-Teaching Math Better

Media
-Net Neutrality
-Mainstream Broadcast Agenda Setting
-Wikileaks
-Overcoming Harmful Taboos

open to any and all input. the point now is ideas. I'll use strict criteria and practicality of application to choose later.

AppleTart

United States1261 Posts

December 19 2010 10:09 GMT

Firstly, I'm glad you are going for these opportunities, I myself received a fellowship this summer for a National Institute of Health REU. My experience is in cancer biology so I'm not much help with the subject matters, but I do know what makes a good proposal!

Do you need tips on that or are you covered? I don't want to say things if you already know haha (just don't want to act offensive).

KurtistheTurtle

United States1966 Posts

December 19 2010 10:11 GMT

Yes! I'd love any tips or wisdom garnered from your experience

BottleAbuser

Korea (South)1888 Posts

December 19 2010 10:13 GMT

Religion + Science needs Scientology. The way you named that category is just begging for it.

AppleTart

United States1261 Posts

December 19 2010 10:25 GMT

Well I'll try to give you some good tips! Pardon anything that seems redundant and obvious, I'm just spewing...

The most important thing in a proposal is inspiration... it's very hard to write a good proposal if you are just going to grab something out of the air or what sounds cool. It really needs to be something important to you because after the introduction to the proposal is a section usually title "Motivation" or "Inspiration". Think of things that happened to your life, important things which have really really impacted you. For example, if a family member of yours died of cancer, then that may be your motivation to go into cancer research. Don't worry about sounding cheesy, and there is NOTHING cheesy about a family member passing away because of this terrible disease. Try to find a real impact in your life (it shouldn't be hard unless you've had a perfect life). If you are truthful it will show in your writing and letters of recommendation.

The second important thing is to show what you have done. If you have done a ton in the area already, write it down, if you haven't then write down what you have read or why you are qualified. You need to try to convince the committee that you are qualified enough to carry out this research. Don't explicitly say " I am qualified b/c etc etc". SHOW them you are qualified. Remember, show don't tell. If you say everything you own is red and you even paint your nails red. That shows them you love red. There's no need to say "I love red".

THINK BIG. THINK BIG. No one is going to save the world, but a small thing can contribute to a larger cause. Saving the world's economy is great and all, but what can YOU as an individual contribute? Apply your one idea to the big picture, I cannot stress it enough...

Make connections. Your one field of research is great, but realize that there are like 8000000000 more fields which are probably relevant to the problem you choose. By drawing connections from different fields, you show you are able to communicate and once again, you prove you can think big and grasp the big picture.

Try to be relatively neutral, but make strong points. Some issues are very touchy, and if one reviewer gets ticked off then even though they are supposed to not let that affect their evaluation, you never know. People are people.

Show how your research outreaches to everyone and forwards research and education. Yes I understand you can fix the world's economy or bring world peace. But how does your proposal actually benefit your colleagues? What are your future plans?

That is my advice.

HULKAMANIA

United States1219 Posts

December 19 2010 10:25 GMT

Some of those topics seem a little too big-picture to me, but I suppose it depends on your background. I mean what sort of research have you done already? What's your coursework been like so far? I guess I'm just not too clear on what communications studies entails.

Then again, I'm not exactly clear on the nature of the project you're proposing beyond that it's supposed to "exhibit the potential for scholarly publication, presentation at a regional or national conference, or creative performance." I'm just skeptical that you would be able to produce something on "the cataclysms of faith" with just eight weeks of research that would be rigorous enough to publish or present.

Just as a starting point, I would say that, if you're trying to come up with a solid research proposal, you need to be as specific as possible. A good way to narrow your focus is to look at the conferences in your fields. If you're supposed to produce work that could theoretically be presented in them, then you might take a look at their themes, their guidelines, examples of their past presentations, etc. to give you an idea of the sort of thing you're supposed to be doing.

KurtistheTurtle

United States1966 Posts

December 19 2010 11:10 GMT

@AppleTart: Thankyou.

One thing which I'm very personally inspired/passionate about is that children should not be forced to go to church or to any religion (not that they can't!). I feel its an infringement on their rights because I've personally had a very scarred and personal conflict with it. The development of self-concept due to communication with religious material at early ages.

@Hulk: Communication Studies entail just that: how we create, shape, send, receive and interpret information. And I'm trying to come up with a proposal, but first I'm trying to generate a huge list of ideas and topics. I've completely re-written papers at the last minute when I found something I liked better.

Another idea: Blogging for Social Change. Analyze which blogs worked, which blogs didn't, and the main factors which differentiated success from failure.