Students transferring to UC Riverside from community colleges can now apply for a summer research internship and receive support through a $5,000 stipend.
Funded with a $250,000 three-year grant from the University of California Office of the President Student Academic Preparation and Educational Partnerships, or SAPEP grant, yearly cohorts of 10 community college transfer students accepted to UCR will be eligible to conduct research alongside faculty.
This eight-week internship starts this summer, said Laura McGeehan, director of academic preparation, recruitment and outreach for UCR’s Graduate Division.
“This is specifically designed for transfer students accepted to UCR. We want to be that keystone for them,” McGeehan said. “Generally speaking, these are local students, and we want to draw from the Inland Empire. We realize some might have limited opportunities for research because they come in as juniors. We want to bring them into our summer research programs and hopefully attract them into our graduate programs as well.”
This program will be an extension of UCR’s 35-year-old Mentoring Summer Research Internship Program, or MSRIP, which is currently available to rising juniors and seniors from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Participants do not need to have previous research experience.
Offering a $5,000 stipend is crucial to alleviating the familial responsibilities that many transfer students have, said McGeehan, who worked to make the grant a reality with campus partners such as Jessica Verazas, assistant director of transfer recruitment and evaluation at Undergraduate Admissions; Nina R. Aguila, coordinator for the transfer success program at the Academic Resource Center; Thomas Dickson, assistant vice provost of Undergraduate Education; and Emma Wilson, dean of Graduate Division.
“The goal is to have graduate program student populations reflect the diversity that exists on campus in our undergraduate programs now,” McGeehan said. “We want to create opportunities for students to gain research experience and we want to offer competitive stipends that allow them to not work at outside jobs for those eight weeks and fully engage in the research experience.”
Interested participants may obtain further details and can apply by March 15: Mentoring Summer Research Internship Program.
