Undergraduate Research Assistantship Scheme

The Research Board is pleased to announce the call for applications for its popular Research Assistantship Scheme for 2010. Awards will be made to researchers (not directly to the student) to allow them to provide an undergraduate with 'hands-on' experience of research during the summer vacation, to gain an insight into scientific research and to encourage them to consider an academic career.

The scheme is a prestigious award that marks out a student as a future researcher and potential academic. It is hoped that the senior researcher, to whom the award is made, will develop the student's potential and interest in research.

• Applicants must be members of the Society who are active psychology researchers employed by a UK HEI, who may then appoint an undergraduate student who is finishing the penultimate year of their degree to become their Research Assistant in the summer break before the start of the final year of their degree.
  
• To be eligible to receive a Research Assistantship award, students must be completing a Society accredited undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in psychology; be considering research as a career; be expecting to achieve a 2.1 or a 1st class degree; and be finnishing the penultimate year of thier degree and due to start their final year following the completion of the project.
  
• The award provides a student stipend at a weekly rate of £200, for a 6-8 week project.

One of the grants will be given to an animal welfare project, funded by The Standing Committee for the Welfare of Animals in Psychology (SACWAP) Vacation Scholarship Award Fund.

Further details, including the full criteria and an application form, can be obtained from liz.beech@bps.org.uk

The closing date for applications is 5 March 2010.

To find out more about how the Scheme works in practice, please take a look at 'Diving into the thick of things' an article that was published in the Careers section of the November 2009 edition of The Psychologist. Louise Acker, an undergraduate who took part in the scheme in 2008, gives an account of her experiences of participating in the Scheme.