Undergaduate Research Assistant Program
The McCombs Undergraduate Research Assistant Program provides opportunities for undergraduate business students to assist faculty research objectives. Funding for these assistantships come from the Research Excellence Fund.
URA-L (Lab URAs)
Research positions in the Behavioral Lab will allow you to grow your management skills, as you work with other URAs and the lab coordinator to effectively facilitate experiments for doctoral students and McCombs faculty members wishing to execute lab experiments. Lab URAs are responsible for setting up the lab to run studies, checking in participants for studies, and overseeing participants as they execute those studies. For these studies, Lab URAs may attend a training session with the experimenter to best understand how to execute the study. During these training sessions, URAs are often asked to pitch suggestions, or provide their own input on how to best execute the study design. Lab URAs are also recruited by the lab coordinator to assist with subject recruitment, which may include creating and distributing study advertisements.
Outside of these main responsibilities, Lab URAs may be recruited to execute Supplemental Data Assistance (SDA) tasks in addition to their weekly shifts in the lab.
As noted above, Ph.D. students or McCombs faculty members who need assistance with a particular aspect of their research will recruit a URA-L to execute these short–term projects, that URAs can complete alongside their hours dedicated to in-lab shifts. SDA tasks will not exceed 5 hours of work per week. These tasks are unique from one another and can be as simple as downloading articles into a folder, or more research heavy, such as content analysis and data organization. URAs will volunteer for those that match their skill capabilities and interests.
Submit an application for a Lab URA position (URA-L)
URA-F (Faculty URAs)
If you are interested in conducting research on specific topics, becoming a research assistant for a specific faculty member within McCombs may be a good fit. To get involved, you should reach out to faculty whose expertise align with your interests (in advance of the semester you wish to get involved). Your best bet for seeking these opportunities is directly contacting faculty whose research interests you, however, below is a link to a form where you can submit materials to express your interest in faculty research opportunities (in addition to your personal outreach); filling out this form does not guarantee a position. To learn more about the different types of projects students may work on with faculty, read the below anecdotes from current and former Faculty Undergraduate Research Assistants.