About UR2PhD Faculty Path

As a faculty mentor, UR2PhD reduces the time you spend on basic research training, strengthens your team’s competence, and equips your graduate students with real mentoring skills — so your lab gets undergraduates with real research experience, mentored well from day one. Since launching in fall 2023, UR2PhD has engaged over 500 participants across its courses and workshops.

What UR2PhD Offers

  • Undergraduate Research Training Course — a synchronous course for teams of 2-4 first-time researchers. Provide course credit or compensation, and your students may qualify for REU and travel funding.
  • Graduate Student Mentor Training Course — trains your graduate students to mentor well, with a $1,000 stipend for those who complete it.
  • Engagement & Awareness Workshops — open sessions on research careers and pathways.
  • Graduate School Application Workshops — help for students applying to CISE PhD programs.
  • Pre-Research Experience Course — a no-prerequisite, asynchronous on-ramp for research-curious students who aren’t on a project yet.

Why It’s Worth It

  • Less time spent on foundational training — UR2PhD handles the basics
  • A stronger, more consistent research team
  • The ability to delegate mentoring to well-trained graduate students
  • A wider, more diverse pool of skills in your lab
  • Up to $4,000 in REU funding to support your mentee’s continued research, once they’ve completed the training course, in flexible summer or academic-year formats

Get Your Team Involved

  • Applying for NSF Supplemental REU Funding : Workshop Recording provides an overview of the UR2PhD program and information about applying for REU supplemental funding. REU discussion begins around ~27:09

What’s Expected of You

UR2PhD’s team handles course instruction, most assignments, and grading — but your mentees still need you. Before the first session, you’ll put together a short working agreement with your team laying out expectations and ways of working, and by the third session you’ll point them to a research paper relevant to their project. Throughout the course, you’ll check in on their progress and ensure they’re compensated with course credit, pay, or a similar arrangement. In return, UR2PhD sends you weekly updates on what your students are covering, plus a performance summary and suggested grade at the end of the term.

Course Materials

UR2PhD makes it easy to borrow, adapt, or adopt its course materials, including:

  • Full curricula for all three courses — the Undergraduate Research Training Course, Graduate Student Mentor Training Course, and Pre-Research Experience Course
  • Workshop recordings and slides on designing well-scoped undergraduate research projects, with worksheets and three worked examples (networking, software engineering, and CS transfer pathways)
  • Templates and recordings for applying to NSF Supplemental REU Funding

Resources

Here are some resources to help you learn more about the program:

Questions can be directed to 71North@niu.edu.

Links