Information for Instructors Supervising Research for Academic Credit Courses

Faculty may wish to post opportunities for undergraduate students to conduct research in the lab. UC San Diego has the Research Experience & Applied Learning (REAL) portal where faculty and students can post position information.

Posting opportunities on the REAL portal can be intimidating — there are many options for what to list, and it's unclear what maps onto positions in biology labs. So, we've created a guide to help you get started ^[PDF].

Students may apply for a special studies course via the campus Enrollment Authorization System (EASy). Once the student has completed their portion of the application, automated notification will be sent to the proposed instructor.

If you do not have access to the notification email, you may sign on at any time to easy.ucsd.edu. *Campus single-sign on credentials are required.

The application process involves steps by the student and instructor and completing a series of questions. Research for Academic Credit Application Sample Questions ^[PDF].

By approving a special studies application, you acknowledge your responsibility for mentoring the applicant, for assuring that he/she receives proper lab safety training and works in a safe lab environment, and for providing a final evaluation of his/her performance.

At the conclusion of the term, under your guidance, the applicant should:

• Give a coherent presentation to your research group or to you individually and/or write a report/paper
• Have contributed to the design and execution of a coherent/self-contained project in a way that reflects meaningful intellectual contributions.
• Have learned concepts, methods and gained experience with primary literature.
• Have acquired data analysis experience and demonstrated an ability to analyze and manipulate data in the context of multiple perspectives, approaches, or hypotheses.
• Have developed communication skills in presenting scientific work.

By approving a research for academic credit application, you acknowledge that you are responsible for assigning the final grade at the conclusion of the term.  Applicants are graded on a Pass/No Pass basis.  A Pass grade is equivalent to a C- or higher.  Students should be evaluated on effort, participation, ability to communicate the research project (research question, experimental approach, data and data analysis) and quality of work.

Final grade (pass or no pass) should be submitted via the University eGrades System.