Each semester, the Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities (RSCA) office offers the Academic Year Undergraduate Research Experience (AYURE) grant to support faculty-mentored student scholarship.
AYURE Program Funding
- Up to $750 for supplies, participant payments, etc. to carry out the project. For more details, see our chart of purchase types allowed by each RSCA grant.
Eligibility
These competitive grants are open to all undergraduate students and their full-time faculty mentors.
Projects must satisfy these core criteria:
- Through one-on-one training from the faculty expert, the project extends the student’s learning and professional development beyond what is possible in the classroom.
- Projects are also intensive, taking the semester or longer to complete. Mentors should meet at least weekly with their student to discuss progress and problems that arise during the semester.
- The student is involved at a high level in multiple phases of the project.
Most projects involve only one faculty mentor and one student. But we have occasionally supported larger projects with two faculty mentors and/or two students.
Further Details: Spring 2025 AYURE Call for Proposals
AYURE Application
NEW Online Application: https://forms.office.com/r/rpJ1kJzAB1
*Please note you will have the option to save your application and come back to it. However, this can only be done by skipping ahead and submitting it (the last question will ask if this is your final submission or if you plan to come back). After submitting, you can click the option to Save, which will take you to your Microsoft Forms account where you can access your saved application. Reach out with any questions - 845-257-3445, rsca@newpaltz.edu.
You may view a preview of the application questions and further detail on the criteria in the Call for Proposals linked above. You might also find it useful to consult a recent rubric (AYURE Proposal Evaluation sheet) used by the review committee, these AYURE & SURE Application tips, and the samples below.
Samples of Prior Proposals (pdfs)
- SUREexample_Arts; SUREexample_Arts2
- SUREexample_Biological Sciences; SUREexample_Biological Sciences2
- SUREexample_Humanities; SUREexample_Humanities2
- SUREexample_Social Sciences; SUREexample_Social Sciences2
*These sample proposals were for our summer grant (SURE). That application is very similar to the AYURE one. Each was considered strong by the RSCA Board, though, of course, none are flawless. Note that the application questions in these older samples might be slightly different than those on the current application.
Congratulations to all Fall 2024 AYURE award recipients!
Lola Allen (Cellular Biology), '25
Faculty Mentor: Lydia Bright (Biology)
Project Title: Constructing an evolutionary tree of local Paramecium species
Brandon Gardner (Mechanical Engineering), '26
Faculty Mentor: Rachmadian Wulandana (Mechanical Engineering)
Project Title: Performance Evaluation of 3D-printed Blades for Wind Energy Demonstrator
William Hamling (Electrical Engineering), '26
Faculty Mentor: Kevin Shanley (Engineering Programs)
Project Title: An Automated Pressure Driven Flow System
Chelsea Lavelle (Mechanical Engineering), '27
Faculty Mentor: Bryan Czibesz (Art) & Ping-Chuan Wang (Engineering Programs)
Project Title: Exploring Thermal Management of Electronics through Cross-disciplinary Collaboration
Casey Maracek (Electrical Engineering), '24
Faculty Mentor: Heather Lai (Engineering Programs)
Project Title: Evaluation of data collection and AI based processing techniques for the assessment of wind farm noise
Alisha Mokal (Biochemistry), '26
Faculty Mentor: Preeti Dhar (Chemistry) & Aaron Haselton (Biology)
Project Title: Evaluating the Insecticidal Potential of Saussurea lappa Extracts on Drosophila melanogaster
Barclay Sherwood (Theatre Arts), '25
Faculty Mentor: Isabel Smith-Bernstein (Theatre Arts)
Project Title: SPIES ARE FOREVER, A Staged Reading. Directed by Barclay Travis
Julian Simek (Chemistry), '26
Faculty Mentor: Miles Wilklow-Marnell (Chemistry)
Project Title: Assessing the Catalytic Activity of a PAsP-type Pincer Iridium Complex in Alkane Dehydrogenation
Ruby Wilson (Psychology/Psychobiology), '24
Faculty Mentor: Elizabeth Hirshorn (Psychology)
Project Title: The relationship between specific language background and stimulus modality on false memory
Caz Wood (Chemistry), 2025 & Samuel Turner (Biochemistry), '24
Faculty Mentor: Pamela St. John (Chemistry)
Project Title: Studying DNA Aggregation Using Both Atomic Force Microscopy and Fluorescence
Polarization
Tianna Yu (Biochemistry), '25
Faculty Mentor: Alyssa Liguori (Biology)
Project Title: Quantifying genetic and phenotypic differentiation among Daphnia pulicaria populations
