A second-year student works in Professor Pollastri's Neglected Disease Drug Discovery Laboratory
University Scholars demand to be challenged, are passionate about learning, and innovate when given the freedom to explore.
Our Scholars are smart, curious, ambitious and heading places. That's why as a Program we try to feed their curiosity and provide ample opportunities for each scholar to learn about and participate in leading-edge research and creative projects that advance and create knowledge. These opportunities take many different forms -- from helping students get into labs to finding research mentors in the private sector to creating opportunities for Scholars to engage in dialogues with important visitors to campus. Our University Scholars are not just learning about research, but getting involved with knowledge production from the outset of their careers here.
Each spring, the University Scholars Program hosts the Scholars Seminar on Leadership, Research, and Innovation: an open-classroom style course designed collaboratively and featuring thought leaders and change makers from both inside and outside the university. The Scholars Seminar gives students insight into the groundbreaking work of Northeastern's innovative and distinguished faculty across the disciplines, as well as access to authors, activists, artists, and journalists who are shaping national conversations on issues of vital importance. Speakers featured in the 2015 Seminar include actress and advocate Laverne Cox; writer Ta-Nehisi Coates; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and documentarian Jose Antonio Vargas; environmental activist and author Naomi Klein; and faculty experts in threat detection, nanomedicine, cybersecurity, public health, entrepreneurship, modern architecture, and American literature.
In the summer, University Scholars may apply for a Scholars Independent Research Fellowship (now the Trail-Blazer Award), a competitive grant that supports original, student-initiated independent research, creative performance, and project making in close collaboration with a faculty mentor. Then, when students return in the fall, they share the results of their projects with the entire Northeastern community at the Scholars Research Symposium (now the Creative Endeavor and Research Experience Symposium, or CERES).
In addition, the University Scholars Program supports term-time research assistantships for students through the Scholars Research Assistant Program, providing another avenue for students to work directly with faculty on cutting-edge solutions to today's most pressing problems.