Undergraduate Research Travel Grants – a new program for Fall 2025
Pilot funding awarded in July 2025 by the Student Services Fee Board allowed Undergraduate Research to launch the inaugural Undergraduate Research Travel Grants program in Fall 2025.
These grants support student travel (up to $1,000) to conferences or other professional development events. The program is open to all undergraduate students working with a faculty or staff mentor on research or other scholarly or creative activities. Although many students plan to present their work at an event, we also prioritize some non-presenting students who wish to attend events for networking and professional development. We also seek to award funds to some students outside of STEM fields.
Our applicants, who submitted research statements, budgets, and mentor support forms in Fall 2025, included 57 students representing 12 colleges.
Partnerships with W.A. Franke Honors College, College of Agriculture, Life, and Environmental Sciences (CALES), and Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholar Development (URSD) provided funding to award $12,500 to 15 students representing seven colleges. The partnerships with Honors and CALES allowed Undergraduate Research to administer the competition and have a certain number of slots awarded to meritorious applicants who met their criteria (i.e., active Honors status or with a major in a CALES department).
Applications will open again in January! We currently have the capacity to award $10,000 toward student travel in Spring 2026 – more if we can identify additional partners.
To partner with us: Please reach out to Kay Orzech (kmcelvee@arizona.edu) sub-team lead for the Undergraduate Research Alliance Funding and Support team. Your support lets you support undergraduate student travel for students in your college while having the administrative details handled by Undergraduate Research. Your support allows us to deepen our pool of applicants and expand the number of students we can fund.
The application for the Spring 2026 Undergraduate Research Travel Grant will be available here in January 2026.
Travel grants of up to $1,000 will be awarded to undergraduate students planning to travel related to their research, design, or creative activity.
Dates: For the Fall 2025 award, travel to a conference or other event must take place between September 1, 2025 and February 28, 2026. There will also be a call for applications early in Spring 2026 that will apply to conferences/events held March – June 2026.
The student must complete an application that includes a budget (template provided within application).
The student’s mentor must complete a form to indicate their support for the student’s application (template provided within application).
The URSD business team will work with the student awardee to process the funding as either a travel reimbursement or as a scholarship awarded to their bursar’s account - we will reach out to you if you are awarded.
All successful applicants must communicate with the Undergraduate Research and Scholar Development (URSD) office about how to best disburse the award, and submit a questionnaire after travel describing their conference/event experience.
Any undergraduate student involved in research, design, or creative activity in any academic field may apply for funding to attend a local, national, or international conference or event where they will present their work and/or complete other valuable professional development activities, such as networking.
Students will be asked whether they have an abstract accepted for presentation at the conference/event, but to open this opportunity widely to students, up to 20% of awards in each round may be given to non-presenters.
Travel grant funds may be used for:
- Transportation to-from the event including airfare, train, bus, or car mileage reimbursement
- Transportation at the time of the event, including taxi, ridesharing, or public transit
- Lodging
- Food
- Conference or event registration
- Poster or handout printing
Receipts will be requested and must be submitted to the URSD business office.
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You may download the Undergraduate Research Travel Grant Application Preview document to see the questions in advance and know what you will need to submit.