The Graduate Research Consultant Program was developed to increase research opportunities for undergraduates in courses. OUR encourages and supports instructors who want to transform course projects or assignments into research projects. By research projects, we mean opportunities in which students use the methods of the discipline to pose questions, apply those methods in investigation, and communicate formally their findings to others. So that faculty can develop, guide, and evaluate the research component, we compensate advanced graduate students (Graduate Research Consultants) to work with the instructor and the students during the concentrated period of the course when the students are planning, carrying out and communicating their research.

You can participate in the GRC program as the Graduate Research Consultant (GRC) for a specific undergraduate course. The individual faculty members find and select the GRC for their courses. If you are the instructor of record for an undergraduate course and have been a GRC in a previous semester, you are eligible to apply for a GRC to assist you if you are planning a research experience as part of your course. Since the start of the program in 2003, a significant number of graduate students have participated as GRCs in the program. See GRC Program Summary Statistics. An increasing number of those graduate students have begun to request GRCs for their courses to support research components they have developed for those courses.

A Graduate Research Consultant can provide faculty and classes invaluable support by guiding students through their research projects from beginning to end. They can help students learn particular research methodologies and be available for consultation throughout the semester. GRCs are expected to work 30 hours over the course of the semester and are paid $750 (beginning Fall 2008) through the Office for Undergraduate Research.

• I wouldn’t have done the project without a GRC and in particular it worked very well to have his expertise in survey research because I’m not an expert on survey methods. So he was able to describe various scales and talk about different kinds of question in a way that I couldn't have done. So I appreciated that.
  
  -- Faculty member

There are several ways in which a GRC is different from a TA. The major difference is that a GRC "coaches" students, but does not grade their work. The GRC has extended knowledge in research methodology. Additionally, a GRC does not attend all of the class sessions. Instead, GRCs can be available for individual or group consultation outside of class hours or they might attend selected classes. In rare instances, a graduate student might serve as both a GRC and a TA, if the different roles in the course are clearly defined.

• My experience as a GRC was exciting—to have a role in allowing students to develop their own field work…for me it was exciting to see how that might work and to see what kind of support you might need for that to be successful…it was rewarding for me. It was also challenging. It helped me to know, if I were to implement [a research component] in my own course in the future how I might go about structuring it.
  
  -- Graduate Research Consultant
• It was a great experience to work with undergrad students. It was fantastic to be able to see how the professor set up his class to include these group research projects. More than anything else, I saw a way of how to get undergrads involved in and excited about research.
  
  --Graduate Research Consultant
• …I was really drawing on her [the GRC’s] expertise with having worked in this kind of project. Because I’m trained as a historian, I’m aware of a lot of methodologies, but I haven’t actually participated in—especially things that kind of bordered on empirical. She knows the literature a lot more in that regard. So it was invaluable to me to have somebody like that.
  
  --Faculty member
• I think there’s always an advantage of having that graduate student/faculty collaboration on a class both for the role model potential and for somebody the students to feel there’s somebody else to go to besides the faculty member.
  
  --Faculty member

The GRC Course List contains more information about courses that have been taught with GRCs.  For more information about how you might become a GRC, please contact our@unc.edu.

Former GRCs who are instructors of good record for an independent course and want to request a GRC, please see the GRC program for FAQs and an application.