Honors College

With the generous support of the Office of the Vice President of Research, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program offers financial assistance for scholarly and creative projects under the mentorship of a faculty member.  Dozens of research projects are funded each year so that undergraduates may undertake ambitious and exciting research endeavors. This competitive program is open to all University of Oklahoma main campus and Health Science Center students who compete for research grants of up to $1,000 each semester.  Students and faculty from across the University discover the benefits of these hands-on research opportunities in laboratories, studios, libraries, and field sites.  At the conclusion of their work, UROP recipients present the results of their research or accounts of their work in progress at the Honors College’s Undergraduate Research Day, a professional-like conference held in April of each year.

Fall applications due November 6th, 2019

Apply for UROP

Contact Jeff Cooper at jdcooper@ou.edu or Dr. Rich Hamerla at rhamerla@ou.edu with questions.

University of Oklahoma honors students Nina Cassidy, Hannah Day and Alex Hamilton have been named 2019 Goldwater Scholars.  The prestigious scholarships are awarded on the basis of potential and intent to pursue research careers in mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering. The one- and two-year scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.

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Congratulations to University of Oklahoma honors student Ursula “Ula” Wildfield, the university’s newest NSEP-Boren Scholarship recipient.  The NSEP-Boren Scholarship provides for undergraduates to study abroad in parts of the world that are deemed critical to U.S. interests.

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Make room in the trophy case! The University of Oklahoma Debate Team duo of Jazmine Pickens and Darius White won the 2019 National University Debate Championship tournament April 7, beating out 102 teams from across the country. A second OU team of Nico Juarez and Jacob Smith finished tied for ninth place.

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University of Oklahoma honors student Maya B. Henderson has been named a 2019 Udall Scholar.  The Udall recognizes undergraduate students who demonstrate a commitment to careers related to the environment or to Native American public policy or health care.

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Over the past decade, Ethiopia has had one of the world's fastest growing economies, largely due to its investments in infrastructure, and it is through building dams, roads, and other infrastructure that the Ethiopian state seeks to become a middle-income country by 2025. Yet most urban Ethiopians struggle to meet their daily needs and actively oppose a ruling party that they associate with corruption and mismanagement. 

In Under Construction Daniel Mains explores the interesection of development and governance by examining the conflicts surrounding the construction of specific infrastructural technologies: asphalt and cobblestone roads, motorcycle taxis, and hydroelectric dams. These projects serve as sites for nation building and the means for the state to assert its legitimacy. The construction process--as well as Ethiopians' experience of living with the disruption of construction zones--reveals the tension and conflict between the promise of progress and the possibility of failure. Mains demonstrates how infrastructures as both ethnographic sites and as a means of theorizing such concepts as progress, development, and the state offer a valuable constrast to accounts of African abjection and decline.

The Honors College is pleased to announce the publication of Dr. Marie W. Dallam's newest book, Cowboy Christians (Oxford University Press, 2018). 

Based on a combination of archival research and sociological fieldwork in cowboy Christian communities, this sociohistory traces cowboy Christianity from the postebellum period into the twenty-first century, drawing on interviews with leaders of cowboy churches, rodeo ministries, and chaplains serving horse racing and bull riding communities. Cowboy Christians locates the modern cowboy church as a descendant of the muscular Christianity movement, the Jesus movement, and new paradigm church methodology, and by doing so contributes to a deeper understanding of the unique Christianity of the American West. 

Dr. Dallam's previous books include Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer (NYU, 2007) and the co-edited volume Religion, Food, and Eating in North America (Columbia, 2014). She is Associate Professor of Religious Studies in the Honors College, where she teaches courses based on American religion and culture.