By Tiffany Gee
Scholarships are available for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students.
Office of Research and Creative Activities is offering $1,000 scholarships to undergraduate students in their various fields of study.
Students are allowed to pick an area of research and are then given the funds to carry out the research.
The scholarship gives students the opportunity to do research as undergraduates.
Last year 238 ORCA scholarships were given out.
“One third of the applicants receive the scholarship. That’s really good odds,” said Melvin Carr, the associate director in the Office of Research and Creative Activities.
The purpose of ORCA is to enhance the experience of the undergraduate, Carr said.
“This type of scholarship is very unusual. There are no more than a handful of universities that do undergraduate research to this extent,” Carr said.
Applications, which include a two-page proposal and an endorsement from a faculty mentor, are due Oct. 13 in A126 ASB.
Carr said many students have written back with success stories from the ORCA project.
“The experience also enhances your resume and helps you stand head and shoulders above students at other universities,” Carr said.
Another scholarship, available for graduate students, is the National Science Fellowship. Graduate students or undergraduate seniors in the sciences may apply for this scholarship, which gives $27,300 for a three-year period.
Top students in the sciences stand eligible for the fellowship, Carr said.
BYU ranks in the top 25 for schools that receive this scholarship, he said.
Deadline for submissions is Nov. 7, 2000.
A grant is also available for professors to mentor students. Environments for Mentoring Grants is a faculty grant designed to give professors the opportunity to work one-on-one with students.
Professors can apply for anywhere from $3,000 to $20,000 and use the money to employ graduate or undergraduate students.
“Think what it would do for students to work one-on-one with a subject matter expert,” Carr said.
The idea for the mentoring grant came from the faculty research council, Carr said.
Applications for the grant will be available the first week of September, he said.
“This way, there are scholarships available for faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students,” Carr said.
Christy Barber, 21, a senior from Albuquerque, N.M., majoring in linguistics, received the ORCA scholarship last December.
Since that time, she has been doing research on the historical linguistic study of the evolution of a phrase in the Mayan language.
The money has been helpful in supporting her while she has done research, Barber said.
“Just the research project has been beneficial on how to meet goals and discipline myself,” Barber said.
Barber said she plans on publishing her findings in a journal.
“Even if I don’t go to graduate school, my results will be beneficial to someone,” she said.
