Lauren Coffey and Adele Handy, University of Georgia undergraduates from Peachtree City, are two of twenty-seven students who have chosen to use their summer vacation to delve deeper into specific research topics, thanks in part to summer fellowships provided by UGA’s Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO).

Coffey is completing a project focusing on the repressive State Law and Order Restoration Committee (SLORC) regime of Burma/Myanmar and various dissident groups’ responses to the regime with her faculty mentor, Stephen Shellman, a professor in international affairs. After earning a bachelor's degree in history, Coffey would like to pursue a career as a political science professor.

Handy is investigating the metal-metal bonds that form when two molecules are combined and further stabilized by a sterically hindered or large ligand, another type of compound in the organometallic chemistry laboratory of Gregory Robinson, a professor in chemistry. She plans to be a pediatrician and medical researcher one day after finishing her biology and psychology degrees at UGA.

Since 2001, CURO has competitively awarded these fellowships to undergraduate researchers who work side-by-side with faculty mentors on individual projects ranging from the life sciences and the social sciences to the humanities and arts. The Provost’s Office, the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute, the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Interdisciplinary Toxicology Program have provided funding to CURO to support these students.

Additional funding has come this year from the UGA Alumni Association plus a private gift that established a CURO Cancer Research Summer Fellowship in the name of Jane and Bill Young. In addition, Coffey's mentor Stephen Shellman, who has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant for his Project Civil Strife, is using part of that grant to support one summer fellow.

“The ability to perform meaningful research over the summer gives students a competitive advantage when applying for graduate schools or for scholarships,” said David Williams, director of UGA’s Honors Program, which administers CURO. “I am very pleased we were able to make this opportunity available and I am very impressed by the quality of the students who have taken advantage of it.”

Pamela Kleiber, associate director of the Honors Program, said the caliber of the students’ proposals has increased each year as more applicants are being exposed to research at the start of college or through interactions with other undergraduate researchers.

The summer undergraduate researchers earn academic credit for conducting their individual projects and give presentations of their work at the undergraduate research symposium CURO sponsors every spring. They also share their research experiences with other students through panel discussions held during the academic year.

For more information on the CURO summer fellows program, visit www.uga.edu/honors/curo.

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