Summer undergraduate research

'Tis the season for making summer plans, and undergrads are looking for research opportunities. I love having summer undergrads in the lab--they are usually super excited to be there, and I enjoy interacting with them. We've had great undergrad students in the lab so far. About a third of them end up co-authors on publications, which is win-win for everyone. I always ask my grad students if they want to mentor someone before signing them up for it, and many of my grad students ask for summer students even before I get to ask them about it first.

This year, for the first time, I am relying exclusively on interviews to decide on whether I will take a student or not. I have never been a huge believer that GPA is a good way to award these kinds of opportunities, so I thought I would put my money where my mouth is. With one caveat: I want students to be fairly compensated for the work they do in the lab, so low GPA students may need to figure out how they can do this (with my help, of course).

I strongly believe that students should receive cash or credit for research, which is after all, work. Since the coffers are a bit bare right now, I am telling all potential students that they must do one of the following: 1) meet the requirements to take research for credit (3.0 minimum GPA at ProdigalU) and sign up, or 2) apply for and receive a research award to cover at least half of their summer stipend, or 3) qualify for work-study so they can be partially paid through that program over the summer. This is something that actively troubles me, since while I don't WANT to have to consider GPA, with my funding situation the way it is, I have no choice. So far, half of the students I've interviewed are specifically looking for research for credit opportunities, since they are taking other classes anyway and would like to get some research experience as well. The other half plan on applying for summer fellowships.

We are fortunate because ProdigalU has loads of summer research fellowships students can apply for, but that usually doesn't help low GPA students. I haven't had any approach me yet about research this year, but if they don't qualify for work-study (and a large fraction of our students do), I will have to turn them away. I am not sure what to do about that--I literally don't have the money to pay full freight on an undergrad. At the same time, it is unfair to limit research opportunities to students wealthy enough to be able to volunteer. Summer research is a really different experience than undergrad research during the academic year when students are pulled in many directions by their classes. It is very sad that these possibly life-changing opportunities are pretty much the first thing to go when research money gets tight.