STAR (Summer Training in Advanced Research)
Faculty Information and Guidelines
The STAR (Summer Training in Advanced Research) program provides opportunities for USD undergraduates who have had prior research experience to participate in full-time advanced research or creative works training under the guidance of a faculty mentor for 10 weeks (June 1, 2027 - August 6, 2027) during the summer.
STAR (Summer Training in Advanced Research) is designed for students with previous training in research who seek to develop more advanced skills in research or creative works. Starting Summer 2027, faculty who solely mentor two or more students in a full 10-week summer research program (STAR, BURST, McNair, or Catalyst) will receive their program's base stipend plus an additional $2,000, up to a combined cap of $6,000 per mentor, per summer.
| Program | Base stipend (1 student) | Stipend when mentoring 2+ students |
|---|---|---|
|
STAR |
$3,000 |
$5,000 |
|
BURST |
$4,000 |
$6,000 |
|
McNair |
$4,000 |
$6,000 |
|
Catalyst |
$4,000 |
$6,000 |
- This increase applies only to mentors solely supervising 2 or more students simultaneously for the entire 10-week program duration.
- The $6,000 figure is a cap, not a per-student amount. Mentoring more than two students does not increase the stipend beyond this maximum.
- This applies across STAR, BURST, McNair, and Catalyst. Stipend amounts for mentors of a single student remain unchanged.
To equitably provide research support for all student/faculty pairs with highly-ranked applications, for the 2027 cycle, each faculty mentor may receive a maximum of 2 STAR awards.
We recommend that you also view the STAR Scholars page to know what is expected of them.
STAR Faculty Mentor Expectations
STAR Faculty mentors are expected to do the following as part of the award:
- Meet with the scholar in person at least once per week during the 10-week program to discuss progress on their project.
- Set attainable short- and long-term goals, review project plans, and assess needs.
- Acquaint the scholar with research methods or creative work techniques relevant to their field, including, e.g., literature review, data collection, analysis and interpretation of results, and evaluation of outcomes.
- Provide support and advice to the scholar as they progress through STAR.
- Provide opportunities for the scholar to develop independent research ideas with suitable guidance and feedback, including, e.g., designing experiments, interpreting literature or results, determining the direction of their creative work, etc.
- Stay aware of community-building and professional development activities led by the Office of Undergraduate Research throughout the summer and ensure your scholar participates in the required number of workshops outlined in the STAR contract.
How to Apply
In accordance with policies from individual academic units, only tenured/tenure-track and full-time non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty are eligible to be a STAR or BURST mentor. If you have further questions, please consult with your individual academic unit.
Identify an eligible and interested STAR student
Read more on student eligibility on the STAR Scholars page.
Work with the student to determine a suitable STAR research project and plan
Provide appropriate guidance to the student on writing their research statement following discipline-specific guidelines
Submit the faculty portion of the STAR application by the deadline.
The 2027 STAR application will be available on January 4, 2027 through February 19, 2027 at 11:59 PM. Only complete applications (both student and faculty portions) submitted by the deadline will be considered for funding. No incomplete or late applications will be accepted.
The STAR Mentor Application includes:
- General information about yourself
- General information about your student
- Agreement that your student wrote their own project statement, with appropriate verbal feedback from you on drafts, without direct editing or writing
- A two-page recommendation and mentoring statement in Arial 11-point font with 1" margins with the following components:
- Description of likeliness of student to achieve the goals of their STAR project, including how their prior experiences have prepared them to successfully pursue the project
- A detailed mentoring plan and how it will allow the student to successfully achieve the STAR project goals. The plan should include logistics of how you will train the student, including how often you will meet and the nature of these meetings (i.e. activities or topics to be discussed), skill-building and professional development opportunities, etc.
- Dates of any summer travel you have planned, unrelated to the project, and a plan for how the scholar will continue the project in your absence.
- Timeline: In collaboration with the scholar, develop a project timeline. Use the fillable PDF to provide a detailed timeline that describes the weekly activities that you and your STAR scholar will perform over the 10-week STAR program. The timeline has a 1-page limit.
- Disclosure of AI Use
- If applicable, attach the group project supplemental document or the interdisciplinary or joint-mentor document. See details here.
- For a joint-mentoring proposal through the STAR program, the student names all research mentors for the project and the mentors co-write a single recommendation and mentoring plan. This plan should address how the mentoring will be divided between the faculty, and why circumstances make a joint mentoring situation desirable or necessary. Each faculty mentor should still submit their own Google form with mentor information,
uploading the co-written document.
Remind your student to submit their STAR application by the deadline.
The 2027 STAR application will be available on January 4, 2027 through February 19, 2027 at 11:59 PM. Your student is responsible for submitting the STAR Student Application by February 19, 2027 at 11:59 pm. Within this form, students will upload their two-page project statement.
Evaluation and Awards
As shown in the STAR guidelines and rubric, much of the application evaluation will focus on the components submitted by the student. The faculty mentor statement will play a secondary role in the evaluation process. Make sure to review the relevant rubric to better understand how various components of the application will be evaluated. STAR funding is limited; even excellent applications may not be funded in a given year.
- January 4 - February 19
- February 23 - March 17
- March 19 - March 26
- April 5
Accepting application submissions
Interdisciplinary and Group Projects
If your project involves multiple faculty mentors (interdisciplinary) or requires a group of students to be funded (Group Projects), there are additional required application materials. Please see these additional guidelines.
Program Contacts
Discipline Contacts
FAQs
If the student has no prior faculty-mentored training in research or creative works as an undergraduate, or if their training has been limited to coursework, has been less than 200 hours (e.g, 5 full-time weeks, 4 units of 496), or was before you were enrolled as an undergraduate (e.g., if they participated in a high school experience or PURE), then BURST is mostly likely a better fit.
However, a student with no prior experience is also eligible to apply to STAR, and if you have reason to think that the student would be competitive for STAR and they would be well served by writing a proposal then you can recommend that they apply to STAR instead of BURST. But the same student cannot apply to both BURST and STAR in the same year.
On the other hand, a student with substantial prior experience may still be eligible for BURST if their plan to do research or creative works with you is in a completely different discipline from their previous work. If you think this may apply to your student, please reach out to OUR for guidance.
Yes. But if multiple students apply to STAR (or BURST) under your mentorship, you need to submit a separate application for each student. The mentoring plans and projects for the two students should be distinct and specifically tailored to each student. If it is a group project, the projects will not be unique, but should have unique contributions from each student.
Each student will also have to submit their own portion of the application. You should be prepared to mentor multiple students. If you have multiple students funded through STAR and/or BURST, you will be eligible to receive up to $4000.
No. Although it is great for departments and faculty to encourage students to apply for STAR, you cannot require it as part of a course or major requirement. Many majors have a research or capstone requirement that can be met by participating in STAR, but there must be other possibilities for students to meet the requirement since it is not financially or logistically feasible for all students to participate in the programs.