The Psychology and Law REU Program is available for students who will be enrolled in a bachelor's degree program at the time of participation in the program. In other words, if you will have already completed your bachelor's degree, you will not be eligible to participate in the program. If you are interested in various internship or work opportunities post graduation, check out the American Psychology-Law Association's student section website at http://www.aplsstudentsection.com/. They have some great resources for both undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in pursuing further education or a career in the law/psychology fields.
The goal of the REU Program is to give you an opportunity to gain experience in psychology and law research. Students who participate in the program have varying degrees of experience with research, ranging from advanced to little or none at all. We expect students to come in with positive attitude and most importantly, a willingness to learn.
The program length is the same as the academic year. Students will be expected to arrive in Mid-August for orientation several weeks before the start of classes at UNL. The academic year generally ends the first or second week of May. You are encouraged, as an REU student, to have a true undergraduate experience at UNL, and thus you are welcome to go home for the traditional breaks (i.e. Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, etc.).
That depends entirely on your home institution. We will work with you to pick classes at UNL that will transfer back to your home institution. Some schools require that all upper-level classes in a student’s major are taken at the home institution, while others require all core/general education classes be taken there as well. It will be important to take classes that will transfer toward your graduation at your home institution.
While at UNL, you will be encouraged to take classes related to psychology and law (i.e. Law and Psychology, Legal Decision Making, statistics and methods, etc.). Aside from the psych/law focus, we will find courses for you to fulfill your graduation requirements at your home institution.
You will have an advisor in the psychology department. Who that advisor is depends on your general research interests. We always try our best to match you with someone with similar research interests, but most importantly we aim to match you with and advisor who will work with you in creating your own, individual research project. You may also work closely with a graduate student in collecting data, refining your own project, etc. This is also a great opportunity to have someone to speak with about graduate school, their experience with the application process, and how they balance school and "the real world."
You are encouraged to work approximately 10 hours/week with the program. Some weeks may be more and some may be less, depending on what stage you are in with your project, and the expectations of your advisor.
You will not graduate from UNL. You will graduate from your home institution, with the credits you earned from UNL hopefully fulfilling part of your graduation requirement at your home institution.
You bet! As a UNL student, you will be ineligible for free room and board, but every other aspect of the program is the same for UNL students.
Again, that entirely depends on your home institution. Representatives from the UNL financial aid office will work directly with your home institution to determine if, or how financial aid will transfer to UNL. Consortium agreements can be tricky, and we are lucky to have great help from the University to help our REU students receive the best financial aid package they can!
Additional Questions?
Email Leah Skovran at lskovran@bigred.unl.edu.
