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Undergraduate Research Contracts, Charters, and "Prenups"

students working on laptopsWe want all undergraduate researchers to understand what the expectations are of them as well as what they can expect from their mentor. Documents like this are referred to in the literature as "contracts," "charters," "research prenups, Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and others. These are not legal documents; they simply help clarify expectations for everyone. This document may be written by the mentor, by the student(s), or as a collaboration between the mentor and student(s).

A few things to consider as you create your document:

  • What are the goals of the project?
  • What are the expected outcomes?
  • What is the timeline for completing tasks to achieve the goals?
  • How much time (usually per week) will students be expected to work on the project? If the experience is part of a course, you might provide a rationale based on credit hours (e.g., a 3-credit hour class usually works out to be about 9 hours of work per week). Or if the students are being paid, you might express this as an hourly wage. 
  • Who will do what on this project?
  • What trainings will need to occur as part of this research project? For example, students may be required to complete lab safety trainings. For human subjects research, they will need to complete CITI training through the Institutional Review Board (IRB). 
  • What are the consequences when students do not do their part or do not submit by deadlines?
  • What are the authorship guidelines for presentations and publications? In other words, what kind of work would merit being an author on a presentation/publication versus acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section? How is author order determined for this project?
  • When the team has research meetings, what will occur at these meetings? What are the expectations for each participant, including the research mentor?
  • How should the team communicate? (e.g., within a D2L site, within a Teams site, email)
  • Is there a hierarchical organization of the team? For instance, a large team might have a faculty member as the Primary Investigator (PI), a postdoctoral researcher, graduate students, senior undergraduates, new undergraduates, etc. Is there a reporting structure that students should know?
  • What resources are available at KSU to support undergraduate researchers? For example:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has sugestions for a "Research Prenup" that is geared toward faculty but could be adapted for use with undergraduate researchers.

Some examples to get you started:

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