SOAR Program Overview

The goal of the Student Opportunities for Academic Research (SOAR) program is to facilitate student research in collaboration with a faculty mentor. To this end, the program provides stipends, travel allowances, and research expenses to support students and their faculty mentors as they engage in scholarly or creative work. Since its inception in 1998, the SOAR program has supported projects with student and faculty participation across every academic discipline at the college.

The SOAR program embraces the definition of undergraduate research proposed by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), “an inquiry or investigation conducted by an undergraduate student that makes an original intellectual or creative contribution to the discipline.”(CUR Website) This definition supports a wide range of projects, the origin of which may be student interest or the product of a faculty member’s continuing scholarship.