Mentors

The ASU Online population is growing every semester, and the group-based design allows for scalability to serve more students than the standard 1:1 faculty-student mentoring model. In addition, group-based experiences provide online students with an opportunity to connect with their peers who share similar research interests across the world.  

More information can be found in the InfoReady application. You must be logged into your ASU account to access InfoReady.

Seed funding is limited to The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty and research staff.

Each proposal is capped at $10,000. Please do not request the maximum amount if not needed. More experiences can be considered and offered if less funding is used. 

All standard ASU rules and regulations apply for OURS program seed funding. Faculty and staff should work with their unit-level business office manager to determine the proper ways to use the funding.

Here are some examples of how funding can be used:

• To cover faculty or graduate student teaching support. 
• To cover the research-related costs for expendable materials, program subscriptions, etc.
• As stipends to online students who are participating in the research experience. 
   

A faculty or research staff member can be included in multiple proposals. However, the goal of the OURS program is to provide a mechanism for a meaningful faculty-student relationship, and this would be challenging to accomplish if the faculty is involved in multiple research experiences during the same semester.

This heavily depends on the faculty member’s area of expertise and/or the culture of the research group. We have funded group-based experiences that are as small as 5 students to as large as 50 students. 

We consider experiences that are both credit and non-credit bearing. The preference varies by the department and the particular online degree program. Please consult with your unit-level leadership to determine what is best for you and the online students.

If the experience is offered as an online course, preference will be given to faculty who follow the 7.5-week session format. 

Barrett Honors credits can be given to Barrett online students with the standard "HON" designation, but they can also receive department-specific research credits that can be applied towards their required honors credit hours. Please direct your students to their Barrett Honors advisor for more information.

Funded group-based experiences can include synchronous activities. In the past, other faculty have proposed group meetings, 1:1 mentoring, etc. as synchronous activities in their proposals. 

Please provide the descriptions of the synchronous activities in your proposal submission for review. Keep in mind that the majority of the online students are non-traditional students located across the globe who have work or family-related commitments when proposing synchronous activities.

We support proposals that include an in-person component if the activities are justified and sensible. The OURS program has supported several in-person, hands-on experiences for online students, such as lab-based experiences, extended summer research and archival research. 

If you have other research opportunities that serve online students and would like to share the information on the website, please contact OURS Program Director Ara Austin.