Undergraduate Research Opportunities

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers students the opportunity to gain research experience through the LAS Undergraduate Research Initiative. Through this program, students work with a dedicated faculty mentor on a research project of either their own choosing, i.e., Honor’s capstone or on a faculty mentor’s project. Students who participate in LASURI learn

• Effective communication skills
• Develop professional relationships with faculty
• Understand how to manage research and research hurdles
• Critical thinking and time management

Students can apply for the program during the spring semester and carries with it a scholarship of up to $1250 per semester. Interested students can find more information at this link. 

Are you interested in gaining experience conducting sociological research and analysis, and possibly writing an original research paper of your own? If so, reach out to Professor Claire Decoteau (decoteau@uic.edu), who will be running the Graduate Undergraduate Research Mentoring program in 2024-2025.

This program pairs graduate students completing research for their dissertations with undergraduates seeking research and writing experience. Undergraduate students can sign up for 296 or 496 credits and will meet regularly with their graduate student mentors to learn valuable research skills and often new software for analysis. Students may be able to present original research posters at the Undergraduate Research Forum. Below are the four research projects undergraduate students could work on in the Spring 2025. When you reach out to Prof. Decoteau to indicate your interest, please explain which projects sound most interesting and whether you would still engage in GURM if you did not get your first choice of project.

1) Graduate Researcher: Tirza Ochrach-Konradi

Project Title: Unbalanced Lives: Caregivers in Chicago Navigating and Augmenting the Mental Health Service System

Project Summary: This project looks at the experience of people in the Chicago area who take on caregiving for a family member or friend who is living with long term mental health symptoms. The mental health support system in Chicago is particularly limited for low-income individuals and those living in under resourced neighborhoods. Through interviews with caregivers and professionals working in the mental health field in Chicago, this project aims to understand how caregivers take on emotional and logistical labor to supplement the mental health services available through the government and non-profit sectors. The research identifies the imbalance of caregiver’s labor and explores the emotional, financial, and physical burdens undertaken by caregivers. Preliminary findings suggest that caregivers take on strain in their efforts to provide for loved ones with mental health struggles as they compensate for the absence and inconsistency of formal mental health services.

In the Spring of 2025, an undergraduate student has the opportunity to join the project to work on processing interviews with professionals working in the mental health field. This project will introduce the student researcher to interview cleaning and the qualitative coding processes. The student will be trained to review and correct transcripts through the Otter.ai interface and learn how to do thematic coding. The student will also conduct internet searches to look into policy and health system components mentioned in the professional interviews, or topics provided by the graduate mentor, to assist in the collection of archival materials and/or contextual information on the Chicago mental healthcare system. The student may review those documents and materials to write informational summaries on specific policy, health services, or other programing for mental health in Chicago.

This is a great opportunity for sociology majors who are pre-med or otherwise interested in entering or studying the health care field and/or sociology majors who are interested in underserviced vulnerable communities and their interactions with state/government systems. In addition to the responsibilities of the role, the student would have the option to conduct their own case study or other research project using the data, with guidance from the graduate mentor. Want to talk to Tirza about the project and the opportunity for participation through GURM? Email her directly: tochra2@uic.edu

Responsibilities:

The student will work no more than 4-5 hours per week. The work will include:

• Meet weekly with grad student mentor
• Review and correct audio transcripts
• Code qualitative transcripts using thematic coding methods
• Conduct internet searches for documents and information
• Summarize document and website content

2) Graduate Researcher:Ni’Shele Jackson

Project Title: Abortion on the Move: Navigating the Fractured Reproductive Healthcare Landscape

Project Summary:Since the 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs decision, pregnant people living in the 14 states with total abortion bans or the 27 states with legislative limits on abortion access, have to either travel out of state to get an abortion or navigate complicated processes to receive abortion medication in the mail. This project compares the experiences of abortion seekers who are marginalized by their class and race, as they navigate different abortion options in the post-Dobbs era. This project seeks to understand what causes a pregnant person to pursue different options, how they discover their options, whether they choose one option versus another, which networks and sources of information were helpful to them, and what barriers they face in securing and experiencing the abortion itself.

Undergraduates who work on this project would gain valuable experience in transcribing and summarizing qualitative interviews, and in coding them using Dedoose software. Students will be able to write original research papers, using the qualitative interviews within the broader study. So far, 60 interviews have already been conducted and another 40-50 will be conducted in the Fall semester. Students can present their original papers at the Midwest Sociological Society or the Undergraduate Research Forum.

We are also seeking students fluent in Spanish who could help with Spanish-language transcripts.

Responsibilities:

·       Meet regularly with graduate mentors

·       Clean and summarize qualitative transcripts

·       Code qualitative transcripts using Dedoose

·       Possible archival data collection on newspapers and legislation pertaining to abortions and bans

3) Graduate Researcher:Jessie Miller

Project Title:How Asian Ethnoburbs Change White & Asian Individuals’ Racial Schemas

Project Summary: While in the past most Asian Americans lived in U.S. cities, the majority are now bypassing the traditional move to cities and instead forming their own ethnoburbs. Asian ethnoburbs are suburban sites where Asian American individuals, families, and businesses cluster to form protective communities. Most studies that have been conducted on Asian ethnoburbs have been conducted on the West coast and this project wants to address this gap by studying a Chicago specific ethnoburb. Through studying a Chicago ethnoburb, this project aims to answer the question, “How does living in an Asian ethnoburb change white and Asian American individuals’ racial schemas?” Racial schemas are how people perceive societal racial and ethnic boundaries and how they fit their own identities into this larger categorization. Studies have shown that people have differing racial schemas based on where they are from, that racial schemas can change or adapt due to migration, and even that racial schemas can change due to interracial marriage. 

To address this question, this project will draw on interviews with both white and Asian American individuals in an Asian ethnoburb and outside of an Asian ethnoburb in order to directly compare possibly differing racial schemas. GURM students who wish to take this project on will gain valuable insight, experience, and training in recruiting respondents, conducting interviews, and transcribing interviews. Because the PI is a white researcher and this study is on the sensitive topic of race, the PI is looking for Asian American undergraduate students (particularly East Asian, Indian, and Filipino students) that Asian respondents would feel comfortable discussing race with. This being said, the PI is flexible in how students use data from this project and is even open to adding interview questions that might more closely resemble a topic a GURM student is interested in.

Responsibilities:

·      Meet biweekly with PI

·      Assist PI in recruiting respondents

·      Assist PI in modifying interview questions

·      Conduct interviews with Asian American respondents

·      Transcribe interviews conducted by student

4) Graduate Researcher: Victoria Brockett

Project Title: Veganism Beyond the Mainstream:

Project Summary:Veganism tends to conjure images of thin, white, middle-class women.  However, in 2020 the Washinton Post published an article backed by Pew Research Center and Gallop Poll data stating, “The fastest-growing vegan demographic is African Americans.”  Rather than assuming veganism is a new to African Americans, this study explores the collective memory and contemporary practices of the vegan movement through the lens of Black veganism in Chicago.  This project will explore histories and practices that have been less visible under the mainstream shadow of veganism, including an exploration of how veganism is understood in relation to community health as well as the well-being of animals and the environment.

This project will be beneficial to an undergraduate student who hopes to gain experience with the initial phases of ethnographic research, specifically the selection of a field site.  Using Excel, the student will have the opportunity to develop a spreadsheet containing information about Black vegan restaurants and festivals in Chicago.  Some travel and dining out may also be involved if the student wishes to accompany the graduate mentor in the field site selection process, yet this is not required.  The student can also use the spreadsheet to initiate their own study.

Responsibilities:

·      Meet regularly with graduate mentor

·      Locate Black vegan restaurants and festivals in Chicago

·      Create a spreadsheet housing information about restaurants and festivals

·      Possible travel to and dining at potential field sites

The Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) was first established in 1986 by the Graduate Deans of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). The goal of SROP is to introduce domestic underrepresented sophomores and juniors to academic research experiences. Student participants work one-on-one with a faculty mentor giving them an opportunity to experience research and the graduate student experience. The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) launched its SROP in 1986, with a total of six minority undergraduate students.

Students interested in this program can find more information here