A. Purpose and Overview:
In order to help decrease the achievement gap between minority and majority students, the Diversity Mentoring Program is designed to enhance engagement of low-income students and ethnic minority students in faculty/student undergraduate research collaboration. Similar to the Faculty/Student Research Collaboration Grants, these awards are designed to facilitate the initiation and development of collaborative research projects between students and faculty or academic staff. Projects under this program are intended to provide students "hands on" experience in the research process. These awards are not intended for support of projects lasting longer than one year. As a condition of the grant, students are expected to present their results at the Annual UW-Eau Claire Student Research Day, or the UW System Symposium for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity. Students are also encouraged to present findings at professional conferences or meetings in their disciplines or at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR); travel funds for this purpose are available through the Student Travel for Presentation of Research Results program. In addition, it is not uncommon for a student to contribute to or co-author a manuscript for publication that results from their work.
Applicants may request up to $2000 in stipend funds per eligible student and up to $500 in research expenses. Faculty will be asked to submit a report to ORSP on this experience.
B. Eligibility:
Faculty and academic staff with .5 FTE or greater appointments working with UWEC students who qualify as minority or low-income students may apply. Please check with ORSP at 715-836-3405 to determine whether a student qualifies for this program, as students must meet specific requirements. Students are expected to move from this program to other funding programs and are unlikely to receive more than two awards under this program in their career.
C. Writing Guide:
If students are joining a project that already has funding from ORSP, the writing guide for Existing Projects should be used. If the project is not yet funded, the writing guide for New Projects should be used.
New Online Application Process
The Diversity Mentoring application will now be processed in the BPLogix eForm system using electronic stamps associated with your university ID as your signature. For more information about BPLogix and instructions, see our Eforms page. Click here to log in to BPLogix using your UW-Eau Claire ID and password. NOTE: BPLogix is not compatible with Mozilla Firefox. Please use Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Safari.
Initiating the Eform
The faculty mentor must initiate the Diversity Mentoring form. To start an Eform, select ORSP in the lower left quadrant of BPLogix. Then select Diversity Mentoring. Fill out the form. The narrative can be uploaded as an attachment to the form. Fill in the names of the individuals in the routing order area at the bottom using the userpicker button. This must be done prior to submitting the application to ensure that those in the routing process have access to the form to approve it.
Submit the application when complete. When you click 'Submit' or ‘Send’, the form will be routed to the next person in the workflow who must approve the form before it is sent to ORSP (e.g., Faculty Initiator sends to Chair, Chair sends to Dean, Dean to ORSP). The initiator should receive an email that confirms the form has been submitted along with a PDF of the form. When first submitting the form, the initiator will receive an email that confirms the form has been submitted along with a PDF of the form. If you do not receive the email or have any questions about this, please contact ORSP or 715-836-3405. NOTE: Any person in the workflow can generate the form to PDF by selecting "Print" at the bottom of the form, and printing to Cute PDF.
If you need to pause before finishing the form, click "Save to Edit Later." The form will remain accessible from the top left quadrant of BPLogix (under MY TASKS). Once you submit the form, it may be tracked, but NOT changed, in the top right quadrant (Running Workflows) while it is being reviewed by others. NOTE: If you keep opening forms from the bottom left quadrant, you will have several duplicate forms. Try to avoid this. You may delete duplicate forms by opening the form and clicking the button at the bottom "Delete Form and Workflow."
Existing Projects (Project already has funding from ORSP)
The proposal consists of:
- Diversity Mentoring Form (select 'Existing Project' in the form)
- Narrative
- Please address each of the following (no more than two
- double-spaced pages in a word-processed document):
- Nature and extent of student and faculty/staff mentor activities and involvement
- Plan for disseminating the results
New Projects (Not yet funded)
The proposal consists of:
- Diversity Mentoring Form (Select 'New Project' in the form)
- Narrative
- Please address each of the following (no more than four
- double-spaced pages in a word-processed document, with page numbers):
- Project objectives, significance and plan (~3 pages)
- Nature and extent of student and faculty/staff mentor activities and involvement
- Plan for dissemination of the results
- History of prior funding from ORSP for this project
- References cited
Faculty members are encouraged to mentor students in proposal-writing and to carefully review student-written proposals prior to submission. Projects will be evaluated primarily based on the quality of the student research experience proposed. Be sure to clearly specify the role of the student(s) in the project, and the nature of the work to be done, as well as the role of the faculty/staff mentor. Click here to see the criteria used by project reviewers.
D. Deadlines for Application:
The proposal may be submitted at any time. When applicants submit the form in BPLogix, it will be routed for approval by the department chair and dean (or equivalents) prior to being processed by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs.
