Summer Research &
Innovation Program

Table of Contents

Mentorship Program (Timelines vary)

The Mentorship program shares an application with SRIP. The Mentorship 1: Summer timeline is available to Morganton residential and Online students. Students that participate in timelines that include a summer component (Mentorship 1: Summer, Mentorship 3: Extended) will participate in SRIP. 

NCSSM Durham Mentorship partners primarily focus on academic research projects with mentors at Duke University, NC State University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and other partnering organizations such as RTI International. The process of securing a mentor is administered as part of the spring course by the Director of Mentorship and Research and is dependent on student's taking ownership of the mentor search procedures and deadlines. Students do NOT ask mentors directly at any point before or during the Mentorship Program. 

Mentors: Research mentors available in 2026-2027 will be announced as part of the spring course. The process of securing a mentor is administered as part of the spring course by the Director of Mentorship and Research and is dependent on student's taking ownership of the mentor search procedures and deadlines. Students do NOT ask mentors directly at any point before or during the Mentorship Program.

Research Topics available: The research topic students pursue will be dependent on the mentor you get matched with in the spring. Therefore, your research focus is often unknown until late spring or not until you begin the experience and learn what your mentor is currently working on and what is feasible for you as a minor under 18 years of age. This requires your flexibility and an open mind to new areas of interest or unexpected projects within the mentor’s research. The variety of topics students may choose to pursue are not limited by discipline or specific type of research, however the topic is dependent on the program identifying an available volunteer mentor in the Triangle which varies from year to year.

• NCSSM Students Gain Full-Time, Professional Research Experience During Summer Mentorship (2022)

• Durham SRIP Showcase - Summer Mentorship (2025)

Summer Research in the Humanities (3 weeks)

The goal of Summer Research is to introduce students to work inside and outside of archives and other sites of historical knowledge, allowing them to acquire a stronger and more sophisticated sense not only of textual but of material and cultural objects and artifacts. This course is inseparably critical and creative: critical, for it teaches students to interrogate the very notion of an archive, and creative, for the interrogation will lead to their own production of knowledge in the form of a public presentation of their research and a conference paper. In the last ten years or so, the institutional limitations of archives have been valuably identified; however, the recognition that sites of knowledge are constructed does not imply the determination of what can be known. For if it is the work of archivists to identify, catalog and systematize, and protect the objects in their collection, it is not their job to study exhaustively all the contents of their collection. They might emphasize some objects at the expense of others, but they do not prevent the discovery of new meanings in the available items. There is always the possibility for surprise, even delight (or horror) within the site in which documents and other objects are stored.  

The great opportunity, at once theoretical and practical, of the active investigation of the collections at UNC and Duke is to work with documents whose significance is not altogether clear as well as those whose significance seems peculiarly determined—so clear, in other words, that other meanings are obscured or occluded. Our focus upon archival is, however, necessarily grounded in the historical worlds of the local.  In other words, the ground underneath the student’s feet, its deep histories and disruptions, will become the object of our study.  What is the relation between local knowledge and global experience? How do economic and social transformations shape the more intimate, everyday forms of cultural practice and political desire in places seemingly far removed from such forces? 

Trips to the North Carolina Museums of Art, Natural History, and Science, and excursions to historical sites such as Stagville Plantation, Catawba Trail Farm, Hayti, and to renovated and ruined factories in and around Durham, will offer further practice in the difficult pleasures of reading diverse objects (including architecture) in their relation to built space. Evenings will be spent reading, in preparation for the day’s adventures.  What will advene, however, cannot be foretold.   

• Critical independence and the art of questioning in NCSSM’s Summer Research in Humanities (2020)

• Inspiring a Love of Learning and Concept of Self: NCSSM’s Summer Research in Humanities (2022)

• Durham SRIP Showcase - Research in the Humanities (2025)

Summer Research in Mathematics (3 weeks)

This summer program is a three-week on-campus research program in mathematics. Students will form small groups to investigate a current mathematical problem from the Mathematical Association of America and communicate their findings to others. Daily activities will include whole group meetings, small group meetings, and individual work time. Students will communicate their findings publically in a final presentation, and submit their work for consideration to be published. 

• Summer Research in Mathematics Enables Students to See a New Side of Math (2022)

• Durham SRIP Showcase - Summer Research in Mathematics (2025)