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First Tuesday in February. February 4, 2025.

Current Pomona students who are returning in the fall.

Students must also be in good standing with the college.

SURPs can be anywhere between 4-10 weeks in length. Start and end dates are decided by the student, in consultation with the availability of their faculty mentor.

Projects can start as early as a week after commencement and end no later than the second week of August. Dates outside of this timeframe require prior approval. Contact grants@pomona.edu to initiate an approval request.

SURP 2025 dates are May 19 - August 22.

The SURP 2025 stipend rate is still being determined.

2023 and 2024 SURP awards for students were $700 per week.

If your project is designed by and under the direction of a Â鶹ӰÊÓ faculty member, it is a Research Assistantship. All other projects are considered Summer Projects.

Students must complete on an online application through .

Students should identify faculty in their area of interest and contact them directly to discuss Research Assistantship options and plan the research proposal. Faculty supervising Research Assistants have their own SURP application to complete.

Students interested in a Research Assistantship that is outside of Â鶹ӰÊÓ should first seek funding from or through the external principal researcher overseeing the project. For projects that cannot be funded by the host institution and are not available at Pomona, the opportunity would be considered a Summer Project. This type of Summer Project application requires both a recommendation from a Pomona faculty member and a recommendation from the external researcher. SURP will contact both recommenders with specific forms, after the student submits their application.

No, only one application per student is allowed.

Yes. Be advised that U.S. Department of State Travel Advisories will be taken into consideration. 

Note that the Â鶹ӰÊÓ Policy Regarding College-Funded International Student Travel has been revised as of October 2022. If your project is outside the United States, please complete a preliminary travel form (pages 2-4 at the link) and upload to your application.

SURP is conceived as a "full time" commitment (40 hours a week) for the duration of the project.

Students are not allowed to hold more than one Pomona-funded summer opportunity.

Summer student employment at Pomona cannot be held concurrently with your SURP project.

Research Assistant proposals should be based on discussion between the student and the Pomona Faculty member. Faculty and students each complete their own applications, but students can use the Faculty member's core project description. 

The Student Application also requires students to describe their individual contributions to the project and how the proposed experience would enhance their Â鶹ӰÊÓ education, so two students applying to join the same faculty research project may have very different applications.

Because the application breaks up the proposal topics into a few questions, it is recommended that students review the SURP application form online before doing any substantial writing of a proposal.

The proposal narrative should provide an outline of the project’s goals and specific aims, what resources contributed to the project, research design and methods, and projected outcomes. The reviewers will typically not be familiar with the subject matter, so we encourage students to use lay terms.

Because the application breaks up the proposal topics into a few questions, it is recommended that students review the SURP application form online before doing any substantial writing of a proposal.

Each student applicant must prepare their own unique application. Duplicate applications (where all of two students' applications are identical) will not be accepted. Students working as a team should each explain their role in the project, and how the project might work if not all members of the team were funded.

All SURP students need a Pomona faculty mentor, even if you have a mentor at another institution.

That faculty mentor will endorse your qualifications to succeed at the outside opportunity you've identified, as well as provide a basic recommendation about the quality of that opportunity.

The student is also expected to be in frequent contact with their Pomona faculty mentor to keep them apprised of the project status.

Pomona faculty mentors and their students can determine between them, on a case-by-case basis, how much contact time is needed for the student to successfully complete the project at a high level.

Yes - provided the visitor can commit to being available to the student in the summer to support the project's success.

The Research Committee, including faculty representatives from each division, reviews the applications.

Successful applicants and their Pomona faculty mentors are notified via email. Awarded students have 1 week from award notification to accept or decline their SURP award. Awards that are declined will be offered to students on the waitlist.

SURP initially notifies all applicants whether they are Awarded, Waitlisted, or Denied.

Additional SURP funds can become available when awarded students decline their SURP. Students should anticipate remaining on the waitlist for approximately 2-3 weeks. After this period, you will be notified if an award has become available or if your project has been denied for this award cycle.

Many of our donor funds have restrictions that limit what they can be used for, so the Committee must review waitlisted candidates not only on merit, but also that they meet the requirements of the available funds. For this reason, the waitlist is not ordered and waitlisted students cannot be given any estimation of how likely it could be that their project will be funded.

SURP is only available to students enrolled in the following Fall semester. Students are not eligible for SURP funding during the summer after graduation.

However, interested seniors could check whether alternate funds may be available in departments or with a specific faculty member (for example, if they have a student wage line on an external grant.)

No.

SURP funding is decided from the outset and based on the feasibility of the proposed project. While you are encouraged to finish your project, additional funding will not be available.

Final posters for the Summer Experience Poster Conference are still required for "incomplete" projects that have become longer undertakings or feed into a senior exercise.

Andy Schuster, Grants Administrator. grants@pomona.edu.