Joan Irvine Smith & Athalie R. Clarke Foundation Award for Undergraduate Environmental Research

The Joan Irvine Smith & Athalie R. Clarke Foundation Award for Undergraduate Environmental Research will be presented each year to outstanding Junior or first-semester Senior students, with preference given to students enrolled in Biological Sciences, or any other relevant undergraduate program at the University of Rhode Island. The award is intended to encourage outstanding students to engage in research to study ways to preserve and protect the environment and improve the quality of life. Preference will be given to research related to understanding, protecting, or preserving the coastal, marine and or freshwater environments. It is expected that the students will perform original research, and at the conclusion of their projects will write a paper or present a paper or poster session. Also, the awardees will be encouraged to present their research at a professional conference. Rationale: The National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have both identified an opportunity to do undergraduate research as a hallmark of an outstanding undergraduate science program. Students at URI have been working on projects in the laboratories of their instructors for decades, but the scope of these projects has been limited by a lack of funding for supplies, small pieces of equipment, etc. The Joan Irvine Smith & Athalie R. Clarke Foundation Award for Undergraduate Environmental Research will enable outstanding students selected in a competitive review of proposals to conduct original research supervised by leading URI scientists and scholars. By teaming up our best students with outstanding faculty, we can provide an opportunity to encourage these students to aim toward careers involved in preservation and protection of the environment.