Independent Research

Undergraduates in the College of Arts & Letters have multiple exciting opportunities to conduct original research and engage in creative projects — as well as to receive the funding and support to make them happen.

One opportunity is the senior thesis. For John Adkins ’23, that meant writing and taping a late-night comedy show. The Film, Television, and Theatre major explored how the genre helps people process events and provides a communal lens for understanding. With funding from the Glynn Family Honors Program, he traveled to New York City to attend tapings of The Daily Show and Late Night with Seth Meyers, and interview a producer at Saturday Night Live.

Some of his peers’ projects included preserving the endangered language of Kibaku, analyzing whether the coxsackie-adenovirus receptor (CAR) is overexpressed in Down syndrome, studying seasonal differences in roosting behaviors of a chimney swift, traveling to Ireland to research the peace walls, and examining freedom of speech in the digital age.

A variety of Notre Dame centers, institutes, and programs — including the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) in the College's Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts — annually provide funding for such projects. Each year, Arts & Letters students receive more than $175,000 in UROP grants alone.

For those eager to get started, the University's Flatley Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement has resources to guide the way — including with choosing a topic, connecting with a faculty advisor, and securing funding.