URAP suspended as SURG applicants rise

Students express disappointment, surprise at changes

By RUSSELL LEUNG daily senior staffer @rjleung7

Weinberg junior Jane Mavis was planning to work in a Northwestern clinical psychology lab this summer. It would have been one of her first experiences in a formal research setting, which she said would be critical for both solidifying her interest in psychology and bolstering her looming graduate school applications.

Summer Undergraduate Research Grant, which awards recipients a $4,000 stipend to lead their own independent projects, URAP is one of OUR’s flagship research funds. This year, however, SURG received 480 applications, 156 more than last year. According to OUR Director and Communication Prof. Peter Civetta, a faculty review committee selects grant proposals for funding solely based on merit, which means OUR’s budget doesn’t restrict the number of awards.

Speakers at Saturday’s demonstration urged attendees to vote against these candidates. Tanyavutti said groups like FAIR arose in direct opposition to her work on the school board.

Tanyavutti had implemented anti-racist work through initiatives like Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, LGBTQ+ Equity Week and Latinx Heritage Week.

“That’s how we got here today. Because the District 65 board dared to care about all human rights,” Tanyavutti said. “Local fascists and KKK, cloaked under the guise of FAIR and Evanston

» See EVANSTON FAIR , page 10

But when the Office of Undergraduate Research suspended its Undergraduate Research Assistant Program for summer 2023, Mavis’ hopes of investigating mood-reading and emotion recognition were suddenly up in the air.

“For me, it’s a big source of anxiety,” Mavis said. “I have next-to-no lab experience, so URAP was very much going to be something that got me comfortable in that kind of setting.”

URAP financially supports undergraduate students to work on faculty projects, catering to those with less research experience who want to receive more guidance from academic experts. Along with opportunities like the

Rather than change the review process for SURG, Civetta said the office decided to shut down URAP before applications opened for the summer. The funds originally intended for URAP will be redirected to SURG.

“It felt unfair and inequitable for us to change the rules in the middle, after everybody’s already applied,” Civetta said. “We felt like, ‘OK, if we’re going to continue to run this review process the way that we’re running it, we’re going to need more money.’ And the only way we can do that is either by arbitrarily decreasing the number of awards that are given to URGs, or (suspending) URAP.”

Because the SURG application review process is ongoing, Civetta said the total amount of money required to finance the grants is still unknown. But, he said the

» See URAP, page 10