Program Overview
Each year, the Annenberg Institute, Economics Department, and Population Studies and Training Center invite Brown University faculty to serve as mentors for the Undergraduate Research Fellows (URF) for Social Sciences and Public Policy program.
Faculty mentors benefit from six weeks of support (early June through mid-July) from a full-time undergraduate research assistant (30hrs/week) who has been trained to perform tasks such as extracting and cleaning data, conducting basic statistical analyses (up to multivariate regression), and creating data tables and visualizations.
- Students who enroll in the URF program receive two weeks of intensive training in applied statistics and coding (Stata) before being paired with a faculty mentor for a six-week research internship.
- Faculty mentors must be available to meet weekly with their assigned RA throughout the internship period.
- RAs are financially supported by UTRA, Annenberg, PSTC, and the Econ department, without requiring additional resources from faculty mentors.
Faculty who are interested in mentoring an RA for the Summer 2026 URF cycle should complete this Google Form by 5 PM on Tuesday, March 17.
- The form asks you to describe the project your RA would work on this summer.
- This information will be used to pair faculty mentors and RAs.
- This could be something already in progress or a project that you intend to start with the help of your RA.
- You can work with your student 1:1 or involve other team members (e.g., doctoral students, postdocs).
- Students will also be able to assist with literature reviews and memo writing, but the majority of tasks should involve data work in Stata.
Please reach out to annenberg@brown.edu with any questions