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Course Setup, Funding, and Management

VIP faculty who are ready to list courses for their teams should use the X92 university-wide house numbers for directed research. For the course prefix, the instructor’s home department should be used (for example, GEOG for the School of Geography, Development & Environment), and courses should be cross-listed as needed to reflect the home departments of any other involved faculty.

While the directed research numbers usually work well, if your department or school prefers another option (like Independent Study), VIP team leads are able to use other options. Consistently using the same course numbers/section number(s) for your VIP enables the VIP program to tag that course with the "VIP" course attribute in the UA Catalog. 

For more detail on enrollment, including options for enrolling students for regular or honors credit, please see the VIP Enrollment Guide. 

Additional Considerations for Course Setup

General

  • VIP faculty who wish to enroll first-year students should confirm with their curriculum coordinator or academic affairs departments that there are no eligibility barriers.
  • Laboratory-based VIPs may need to define their courses as workshops (X97), since laboratory courses often require more contact hours than VIP teams typically require.
  • If you have questions about hiring undergraduate or graduate students who want to be part of your VIP team, see the VIP Hiring Guide for details on these processes. 

Course Evaluations

To enable course evaluations for X92 courses that enroll more than five students, please contact the University Center for Assessment, Teaching & Technology to request an override of the “no course evaluations” setting.

Specific Program Connections

  • If you or your students are associated with Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, be aware that EEB, Biology, and Bioinformatics majors who participate in VIP/CURE for academic credit must complete a form in order for these credits to count towards major elective requirements. See the EEB VIP and CURE page for more details.
  • The College of Information Science has policies in place to allow VIP participation for credit to substitute for/compliment some of their capstone requirements. Please encourage students to check on this as they are joining your VIP for credit to ensure they are registered for the correct course and section of capstone.  

Funding Opportunities

Continuing Funding Opportunities

[National] The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) offers periodic funding for student conference travel (to any relevant conference), and the possibility of small faculty grants as well (depending upon your area of study).

U of A is an institutional member of CUR and because of that, it is easy and free to become an individual member. CUR has 11 discipline-specific divisions, some of which offer small grants in Fall and/or Spring. Join by following the link above to activate another source of support for you and your VIP students! 

External Grant Proposals - Consider, as you are developing external grant proposals, how a VIP team may fit into your research plan and/or broader impacts. The VIP program at the U of A is happy to provide a letter of support to submit with your grant proposal - please reach out to VIP Program Coordinator Kay Orzech directly. 

[UA Internal] Competitive funding is available through the Office of Research and Partnerships (ORP) that is sometimes available to support creation of new VIP sections or expanding the number of students an existing VIP can accommodate. Expansion funds are meant to compensate faculty time for preparing additional research experiences. Funds may also be available to support paid student research employees. 

Please visit ORP's Internal Funding web page for more information. 

Undergraduate Research at U of A outlines Undergraduate Research Resources for Faculty on their website. 

They also track Funding Opportunites for Student Researchers. 

Becoming a VIP Team Lead will ensure you are added to the VIP Team Lead listserv, where current funding opportunities will be shared by the VIP Program Coordinator. 

Undergraduate Research Listings

Established VIP teams can be included in the undergraduate research database maintained by U of A. Please visit the Faculty Section of the Undergraduate Research website for information on how to use the UAVitae system to list your VIP team. Updating this information in UAVitae allows students to find your team by searching a list available to them on the Undergraduate Research website.