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Students working alongside faculty researchers as they explore new ways to understand and improve our ever-changing world.
OVERVIEW
Close student-faculty interaction is at the heart of USOAR, or Undergraduate Student Opportunities in Academic Research. Through USOAR, students obtain paid research experience—working 5-10 hours a week—and the chance to build strong and thoughtful relationships with faculty.
USOAR seeks students with financial need and who come from underrepresented populations, offering them a clear path into college-level research.
Work-study eligible students apply for a research position with a particular faculty member who will oversee their progress throughout the course of the semester or year. Many faculty members offer an ongoing student position that may continue throughout the student’s undergraduate career.
Across the disciplines, our faculty make scholarly contributions and groundbreaking discoveries that are expanding UVA’s research influence worldwide. For our undergraduates, the link between the classroom and UVA’s research enterprise is USOAR, the Undergraduate Student Opportunities in Academic Research program. Through USOAR, students engage in research investigations alongside faculty mentors who are renowned experts in their fields.
From the sciences to the humanities and social sciences, USOAR students are engaged in valuable research experiences. The following are a few examples.
USOAR supports first-year, second-year, and transfer students who wish to substitute work-study for paid research opportunities with faculty members—an experience that stimulates young researchers and boosts their academic success. USOAR applicants are not required or expected to have prior knowledge of research skills and experiences—just the capacity to do good work and some background in their area of interest.
Through USOAR, faculty and students search together for new solutions and new ways to understand our ever-changing world. UVA faculty find working closely with students toward a common research goal to be very exciting and powerful.
USOAR professors, who often have full teaching loads, take time to mentor and instruct students in research protocols and practice. Although USOAR positions are for one year, many faculty give students the opportunity to continue lab research throughout their undergraduate careers.
Growing up with a father who was a statistics professor, Sabrina Yen (McIntire ‘18), above, inherited a tendency to think analytically. She found a USOAR research project with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering that analyzed the environmental and economic impacts at each stage of wine production. Sabrina conducted a cost-benefit analysis of the choices organic wine producers face when labeling their products. She was paired with Mark White, associate professor of commerce and director of the McIntire Business Institute, whose interests include sustainable commerce.
Close collaboration between students and faculty is one of the distinguishing marks of a UVA education. By investing in this important initiative, you play a vital role in fulfilling our promise to educate tomorrow’s leaders and advance knowledge.
One of the reasons USOAR wants to focus on work-study students, especially those who are very interested in learning about research, is because it’s often harder for those students to get volunteer experience. Their financial need usually requires them to devote almost any free hours they could volunteer to do paid work instead.
Support for USOAR and its expansion helps educate tomorrow’s leaders and promote the innovative research to advance society.
A USOAR position is not your typical student job. It’s a chance to work alongside faculty researchers as they explore new ways to understand and improve our ever-changing world.
Other Opportunities
The Center for Teaching Excellence is key to UVA’s extraordinary culture of learning and student-faculty interaction. With services that enhance faculty and graduate teaching assistants' teaching and professional development, CTE keeps alive the magic that occurs when impassioned teachers challenge bright students in the classroom and beyond. Your support for CTE will ensure its success.
Gifts to the Bicentennial Professors Fund have helped recruit and retain outstanding faculty, which is one of the Honor the Future Campaign's top fundraising priorities and is critically important to the University’s future prominence.
The Dathel and John Georges Student Center is the heart of Advising at UVA. The center’s staff help students find answers to questions about majors and careers, as well as direct them to research and internship opportunities.
