As the fall semester begins, undergraduates wanting to explore potential research opportunities within their major or beyond will find that task has become much easier, thanks to a completely redesigned and updated Office of Undergraduate Research and Studies website.

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The Office of Undergraduate Research and Studies (OURS) website, www.umass.edu/ours, was relaunched in late spring after a more than yearlong collaboration between OURS program staff, the Student Government Association (SGA) and university administration. The website revamp is phase one of a three-phase project supported by the Office of the Chancellor through a one-time fund of $50,0000 requested by the SGA in 2022.

“The SGA felt research is harder for some to get into and so they wanted a more equitable way,” said OURS Associate Director Deb Phillis, who has been with the OURS program since it started more than 10 years ago. “What we’re trying to do is have a resource where if faculty want to place their research on our site, we can have them do that and the students will have a place to go..”

Phase one of the website project is designed to teach undergraduates about research fields, faculty, centers, and institutes at UMass Amherst, providing a first look and central go-to location to find information. The site also has all available undergraduate facing pages and links to UMass colleges, schools and majors. 

The OURS program is a branch of the Learning Resource Center (LRC), which serves as the central undergraduate academic and undergraduate research support unit for the university.  The main office is located on the 10th floor of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library.  

LRC executive director Lin Tang, Ph.D. '12, Phillis and the program’s mentors have seen an increase in students seeking assistance or inquiring about research opportunities every year. Last year, the OURS staff assisted 18% more than students than the year before.

“OURS started with the goal of providing access for all those students interested in research. Students who learn and are involved with research discover what they like and don’t like, they learn about teamwork, they learn to network better,” Tang said.

She added that the redesigned site is an ongoing collaborative effort. She thankedthe SGAbecause “they initiated the conversation” about upgrading and making the site more centralized, more accessible and more informative about UMass has to offer across all majors—including those outside the STEM field.

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“Just because you’re a hospitality major, for example, it doesn’t mean you can’t do research,” Tang said.

Chris Brady, an economics and political science double major, served as the SGA Academic Oversight Committee (AOC) chairperson and communication liaison throughout the project last academic year. He credits his fellow student government members Ed York and Julia Carino, former AOC chair, for their legwork into developing a proposal..

“I think that this will be a total gamechanger for UMass students and the university at large,” Brady said.

The motion was spurred by the challenges the system presented for undergraduates searching on their own.

“It was not entirely obvious where open research positions were located,” Brady said. “There was a lot of variation between departments with how they advertised these positions, if at all. Some departments were great at notifying students of open roles, while others took a much laxer approach. A lot of the time, students were forced to cold-e-mail professors in the hope that someone had an opening in their lab.”

Manan Talwar, graduate student and teaching associate in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, is the project’s tech lead and has been guiding his team through a web of twists and turns. He feels the project is worth it and is grateful it has leaders like Tang and Phillis, behind it.

“Before our project was actually launched, there was no way to actually have this kind of representation or a place you could look up research opportunities. There’s something called having research opportunities, and also having visibility among those opportunities.  I think what our project was really aimed at was we wanted to enhance that visibility.  So, if I want to look at some research, I just go to one website and find everything that I have for my major and my college and for any interest that I might have, including opportunities which are cross discipline,” Talwar said.

OURS phase two includes open access Learning Management System workshops designed to teach students about research access, building resumés and how to apply and obtain research opportunities.

Phillis added that OURS outreach is ongoing to inform incoming and current students through information sessions and participating in research panels hosted by student-led groups and organizations. 

The project’s final phase, scheduled for fall 2024, is expected to have a searchable database of all research postings.