SS3090: Undergraduate Program for Exploration and Research in Social Sciences (UPERSS)

The UPERSS program provides opportunities for undergraduate Social Sciences students to work closely with faculty (or an advanced graduate student) to do research, creative work, or a community-based project.

How UPERSS Works

Students enroll in SS 3090 Exploring Undergrad Research in Social Sciences for between 1-3 credits. Students earn 1 unit of academic credit for every 3 hours worked per week (limited to a total of 3 credits per semester). UPERSS is open to all Social Sciences undergraduate majors who have a GPA of 2.5 or higher. Still, in order to be placed on a project, students must apply and be accepted by the respective faculty mentor.

UPERSS students share an overview of their research experiences at the annual Social Sciences Undergraduate Research Symposium (date TBD). Alternatively, students can fulfill this requirement by creating a well-developed poster, website, or visual representation of the project, or sharing a 4-5 minute recorded presentation of the project.  Other options, such as co-authoring an article in a journal, presenting to a class, or presenting at a conference could also work. All decisions on this requirement should be made with the faculty mentor.

Learning Objectives

  • Communicate effectively through writing, speech, and visual information
  • Develop critical thinking skills
  • Develop teamwork and accountability skills
  • Practice presenting results and conclusions of the research

Getting Started

The first step is to review the project descriptions below and weigh decisions on time commitments and how well the opportunities match your interests. You might also approach a faculty member you know is doing research that interests you, even if they don't have a project listed here, to inquire whether they would be open to doing a UPERSS project with you. You’re encouraged to reach out to mentors for any projects that you are interested in to learn more.

Application Process

To ensure consideration, the application deadline for Fall 2024 courses is Friday, April 12, 2024.

Applications should be emailed directly to the faculty mentor. They should include:

  • Resume
  • Cover Letter. Letter should be a professionally-written statement that includes: academic, personal, and/or career interests, any research experiences or courses to date; and how participation in this UPERSS project aligns with interests and goals

The faculty mentor will review and contact you. They may wish to schedule an interview. If you are accepted/approved, your faculty mentor will contact the Social Sciences administrator to sign you up for the course.

Fall 2024 Projects

Currently available projects and faculty mentor — link will take you to full descriptions

  • 1. Historic Cemeteries: Mapping, Management, and Memory (Scarlett)
  • 2. Energy Infrastructure in Post Mining Communities (Scarlett)
  • 3. Public value in the Global South (Wellstead)
  • 4. Treasure in trash? Aluminum, landfills, and communities in America (Robins)
  • 5. Financing Local Food: the Keweenaw Coop and Community Capital (Robins)
  • 6. Refugee Integration in Greater Detroit (Hannum)

Research Project Descriptions

1. Historic Cemetaries: Mapping, Management, and Memory (Fall 2024)

Faculty Mentor:  Dr. Tim Scarlett

Project Description

Help Copper Country community organizations with their legacy cemeteries. Community organizations have asked us to help with mapping and remote sensing, geospatial visualization, planning for sustainable management, enhanced protection, and potential public interpretation of neglected cemeteries. Students might use tools like Ground Penetrating Radar and other remote sensing and mapping technologies, or perhaps focus on archival and/or oral history research. Each project helps digitize inventories of burial grounds and build management tools. Through a review of published literature on cemetery archaeology and management, provide recommendations on best practices for community organizations and municipalities for a problem facing many rural towns in the United States. Help to build connections between the cemetery inventory and online geospatial research tools, like FindAGrave.com and Ancestry.com, with an eye to building a robust management tool, facilitating heritage building/place making among local and the online communities of the “Copper Country Diaspora,” creating useful interpretive material, and enhancing heritage tourism development in these communities.

Potential Benefits

  • Student team members can choose which parts of the project to undertake, so commitments of time and tasks can vary. Projects will dovetail with other student classes, individual skill learning choices, and career plans. They may therefore place more emphasis on remote sensing and geospatial technologies; community-engaged or collaborative study; development of web resources, tools, or data structures; archival and/or oral history work; or heritage tourism, policy and management planning, or educational program development.

Student Time and Commitment

  • Option to take for 1-3 credits, with hours corresponding 3-9 hours/week

Contact

Timothy Scarlett

  • Associate Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology

2. Energy Infrastructure in Post Mining Communities (Fall 2024)

Faculty Mentor:  Dr. Tim Scarlett

Project Description

Individuals or groups working in this UPERSS course will fill a critical role in the PUSH research collaborations: talking to people in post-mining communities around the country about the energy transition. Building on work by previous student teams that mapped out energy infrastructure and mining heritage in different geographic areas, the goal is to find potential community collaborators in different types of places: Urban and rural, arid vs. temperate vs. subtropical, mountains vs. lowlands, places of economic growth vs. poverty or stagnation, private vs. public vs. Tribal lands, low vs. high environmental contamination, and so on. Team members will research potential sites, contact community partners in these regions, and make initial assessments about their suitability and interest in collaborations.

Potential Benefits

  • Students will get experience researching in both "big data" and focused, ethnographic-style studies, although the specific skills will derive from specific studies in each location. Students then start at the "ground floor" co-designing participatory studies of past and present energy infrastructure in a place in order to form inclusive and just plans for energy futures. planning, or educational program development.

Student Time and Commitment

  • Option to take for 1-3 credits, with hours corresponding 3-9 hours/week

Contact

Timothy Scarlett

  • Associate Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology

3. Public Value in the Global South (Fall 2024) 

Mentors:  Drs. Adam Wellstead, Anat Gofen (Hebrew University - Jerusalem), Saba Hinrichs-Krapels (Delft University of Technology)            

Project Description

Over the past decade, policy innovation labs (PILs) have become important policy actors. This is the case in the Global South. PILs play an important role in creating public value. 

See: Wellstead, A.M., Ottenhof, N., Evans, B. and Gofen, A., 2023. What's going on in there? Canadian government policy labs and public value management. Canadian Public Administration, 66(4), pp.514-532. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/capa.12548 

This project will investigate how Global South based PILs contribute to public value.

Potential Benefits

  • Develop career-oriented research skills

  • Work with faculty members outside of Michigan Tech

  • Learn about policymaking in the Global South

  • Be included as an author on a peer-reviewed article

Student Time and Commitment

  • Negotiable

Contact

Adam Wellstead

  • Professor of Public Policy, Social Sciences

4. Treasure in the trash? Aluminum, landfills, and communities in America (Fall 2024)

Faculty Mentor:  Dr. Jonathan Robins

Project Description

This project is part of a Depart of Energy-sponsored investigation of the feasibility recovering aluminum through landfill (https://www.netl.doe.gov/project-information?p=FE0032236). Join an interdisciplinary team working on uncovering how aluminum got into consumer products, how those products wound up in landfills, how much might be buried, and what we might be able to do about it. Student research opportunities include historical investigations of the aluminum industry and landfill sites, studies of policy at local, state, and federal levels, and evaluations of landfill-adjacent communities with an emphasis on environmental justice issues. All majors welcome to apply.

Potential Benefits

  • Learn how to identify, access, and interpret records from business, government, and other sources

  • Practice communication and collaboration skills with an interdisciplinary team
  • Contribute to published research
  • Further opportunities with MTU Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Senior Capstone Projects or Senior Design Team, and paid summer research positions.

Student Time and Commitment

  • Option to take for 1-3 credits, with hours corresponding 3-9 hours/week

Contact

Jonathan Robins

  • Associate Professor of History

5. Financing Local Food: the Keweenaw Coop and Community Capital (Fall 2024)

Faculty Mentor:  Dr. Jonathan Robins

Project Description

In 2024, the Keweenaw Co-op will be moving to a new building, thanks to a campaign to raise more than $1 million in investment from the community the Co-op serves. Since its founding in 1973, the Co-op has relied on investment from community members to provide grocery services, including a growing effort to sell more locally-grown food. Students working on this project will develop a case study of the Co-op and its fundraising campaign for the National Coalition for Community Capital (NC3), an organization that promotes local investment in local businesses.

Potential Benefits

  • Experience in: archival research; oral history and interviewing; business history; writing for broad audiences. Learn more about: national, regional, and community food systems; sustainable business practices

Student Time and Commitment

  • Option to take for 2-3 credits, with hours corresponding 6-9 hours/week

Contact

Jonathan Robins

  • Associate Professor of History

6. Refugee Integration in Greater Detroit (Fall 2024)

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kathryn Hannum

Project Description

What are the critical factors for successful refugee integration? How are refugee integration services and policies working in the greater metro Detroit area? Students will work on a multi-method, team science project that aims to answer some of these questions. Students will assist with coding qualitative data collected from interviews with refugee populations in SE Michigan. Coding will be done in NVivo software with the assistance of a pre-determined codebook. We will then analyze themes and patterns while comparing findings to refugee integration literature.

Potential Benefits

  • Learn the qualitative interview coding process. 
  • Learn how to use NVivo software. 
  • Learn about key theories related to refugee integration. 
  • Learn key aspects of participatory action research

Student Time and Commitment

  • 1 - 3 credits (equal to 3 to 9 hours per week)

Contact

Kathryn Hannum

  • Assistant Teaching Professor
  • Coordinator of Student Programs
  • Policy and Community Development Program Advisor

Program Contact

Kari Henquinet

  • Teaching Professor, Social Sciences Undergraduate Studies Director
  • Peace Corps Prep Program Director
  • Sustainability Science and Society Program Advisor