Student Researchers
A student researcher's first point of contact for support will always be your supervisor or instructor. They’re best positioned to assist you with the research you’re doing, either for a course or a thesis. Following your instructor or supervisor, it’s best to contact your undergraduate or graduate officer, and/or the departmental administrative staff.
The HSS Dean’s Office Grant Facilitation Officers (GFOs) provide support to student researchers for select competitions only where students are eligible to be applicants. The GFOs do not provide support for graduate or undergraduate scholarships or fellowships. These are supported by your departments and the School of Graduate Studies.
Research Grants
There are a few research grants that students are eligible to apply for. HSS GFOs provide assistance to students, for example, on the following competitions where students are eligible as applicants or which are designed to support student research:
- Memorial University: ISER – Research Grant
- Memorial University: J.R. Smallwood Foundation – Research Grant
- Polar Knowledge:- Northern Scientific Training Program
- Provincial Archaeology Office: Research Grant
- NSERC: Undergraduate Student Research Award
The application submission processes and deadlines for these competitions are maintained in the HSS Research Funding Tracker. Students must follow the same submission process as other applicants and, if applicable to the competition, also use Memorial's Researcher Portal (see below). For other sources of student funding (especially scholarships and fellowships), see the School of Graduate Studies Awards and Scholarships database.
Memorial Researcher Portal
If you are a student applicant, you must follow the same process as outlined in the "Submitting Proposals" section. Further details for this process are in the "How do I...?" section. The only difference for students is that you must also add your supervisor(s) as team members to your Memorial Researcher Portal file.
The HSS Dean’s Office, through the GFOs, reviews all research grant applications. Compliance with Memorial policies, collective agreements, and guidelines is part of the review process for all funding proposals, including students ones. If you are a student researcher and applying to one of the above research grants, reach out to both your supervisor and a GFO, and they will guide you through the process.
Note that the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science operates under the following guidelines:
- No student may be the employer of record for another student;
- All students must be supervised by an Academic Staff Member;
- Supervisors are responsible for the well-being and safety of their student employees.
In practical terms, this means that student applicants cannot hire other students on their own grants or research funding. If you require research assistants for your research, the assistants must be hired by a faculty member. Therefore, the faculty member may have to apply for a research grant to hire students for your research project.
Holding Funds
While students may be eligible to apply for research funding, they are not permitted to hold research accounts outright. If you are awarded funding, it will be held in trust in a research account by your supervisor on your behalf. Your supervisor must sign off and approve of the use of funds.
Research Personnel
Stipends
Stipends are income designed to support student research and training. Your supervisor may have built stipend funding into their research funding proposal and may recruit a student to supervise a thesis or student project that is related to their own research. These positions are advertised through normal, departmental means.
Another type of stipend is provided to departments from the School of Graduate Studies. When you apply to study with a department, a stipend may be offered as part of your invitation to study with that department.
Employment
There are a wide range of opportunities for student employment in faculty members' research projects within HSS. Students can be employed as research assistants in the following ways:
- Undergraduate Research Assistants (URA);
- Graduate Research Assistants (GRA/GA) as governed by the TAUMUN Collective Agreement;
- Student Life Programs:
GAships and Student Life funded positions are typically for a set number of hours over the course of a semester and are paid by the hour.
URA and GRA positions can be funded directly by a researcher's funds; hiring occurs through a departmental process. Departments are also provided with a certain number of GAships per year, and these may also be given to faculty members to use for their research projects. Again, hiring occurs through a departmental process.
Positions funded through Student Life programs are managed by researchers through their departments.
Student & Supervisor Research Responsibilities
Please see the School of Graduate studies document: Responsibilities of Supervisors and Graduate Students.