Faced with more qualified applicants than they could fund, University administrators were forced to decrease the number of full-time Undergraduate Teaching and Research Assistantships awarded by almost 20 this year.
The pool of applicants was qualified, according to Dean Margaret Klawunn, but limited funding allowed the University to support only 180 summer research grants. Last year, almost 200 were funded, Klawunn said. Klawunn said it is University policy not to reveal the number of applicants, but she said that on the whole the selection committee felt it had to turn down many qualified proposals.
The program is facing a tighter budget because it is sponsored partly by grants, which are only short-term sources of funding. In past years, the Hughes Foundation supported UTRAs in the sciences, but that funding is expected to end next year, Klawunn said. Similarly, another private source of funding, the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, ended this year and contributed to the drop in UTRAs available.
The decrease in external funding was not matched by increased support from the University, Klawunn said, "so we did have to turn down some good projects this year."
One such project was proposed by Rob Morris '05, who was initially denied a UTRA. Morris, a physics concentrator who has worked as a research assistant in the department for three years, applied for funding for a project that relates to his thesis on string cosmology. Ultimately, his project was awarded funding.
The funding from the Hughes Foundation used this year was left over from last year's Hughes grants. Last summer, 20 projects received Hughes funding - the same number as this year, according to Dean David Targan. Next year, the University plans to work more closely with faculty to make use of departmental funding so that students will still benefit from undergraduate research opportunities, he said.
According to both Klawunn and Targan, students who were applying to continue a previous UTRA did not necessarily get a second one. Klawunn said that decision was made to give research opportunities to new participants. One of the UTRA program's aims is to facilitate continued projects and cooperation with faculty, but this year the second UTRAs were put aside until funding decisions were made for first-time applicants, decreasing the usually more generous number of continued grants.
Administrators hope to increase the number of available UTRAs to 300 to fulfill the program's mission of providing educational opportunities, Klawunn said.
Klawunn said she hopes to raise more money for UTRAs through Brown's upcoming capital campaign to replace the grant funds. As a type of undergraduate research, the UTRA program could receive additional support through funds raised in the campaign, which is in its initial stages.
University administrators are also working on obtaining other grant funding for UTRAs, Klawunn said.
But securing outside funding isn't necessarily easy, Targan said, because government agencies and private foundations can have their own agendas about what types of research should be done. If the University is in charge of distributing funds, the research can bend more towards the student's interests, he said.
Without additional funding, the University should be able to support about 165 UTRAs next year, Klawunn said, but she expects new grants will provide some extra support. Many grants are specific to the UTRA program and come from previous UTRA beneficiaries or parents of students who have participated in the program, Klawunn said. These patrons have often experienced the benefits of undergraduate research and wanted other students to have the same opportunity.
