Undergraduate students may be the most underused engine in your scholarship pipeline. If you don’t have grants or graduate students, undergraduates can move your research forward more than you think. Handing off research tasks to undergraduate research assistants doesn’t just give you time for the work only you can do, students get multiple benefits from engaging with authentic research experiences.
You’re probably thinking, “It would take more time to teach a student than to just do it myself.” That feels true, and it may be true for a week or two. But after they’ve completed the tasks a few times on their own, you’ll be freed up to focus on higher-level research tasks.
Why scholarship stalls when you don’t have grad students or research time
The bottleneck isn’t your ideas. It’s your capacity.
Faculty at teaching-heavy institutions often carry 3 or 4 courses per semester plus a full service load. Research gets squeezed into evenings, weekends, and the rare uninterrupted summer week. If you’re the only one moving your projects forward…they’re going to stall out. You, like every other faculty member, have limited time – that’s spread too thin across teaching, scholarship and service.
That’s where undergraduates come in. Published research on undergraduate research experiences shows two consistent outcomes: students gain skills, confidence, and career clarity, and faculty gain measurable scholarly output. It’s one of the few faculty workload tools where both sides actually win. (See Hale & Freeman, 2025 and Navarrro, 2026.1)
What undergraduate research tasks actually look like in practice
Most introductory research tasks do not require advanced training or skill.
A minimally trained undergrad can pull and screen articles, clean interview transcripts, tag topics in a dataset, clean spreadsheet data, format a manuscript to journal specs, or create graphics using a template you provide. These are not low-value tasks. They’re the time consuming tasks that pile up and stall a project for three months while you wait for “a free Saturday” to catch up.
When you hand off the introductory work, you can focus on more complex tasks like situating the research questions in the literature, interpreting the findings, presenting at conferences, and writing articles that impact your field.
The ATLAS Lab story: from one nervous RA to a working team
I run a research lab called ATLAS (Advancing Teaching and Learning in ASL and interpreting Studies) with limited grant funding and no graduate students. When I brought on my first undergraduate research assistant, I didn’t know what to hand off. I knew that I had more work than I could reasonably handle and that she could “help.” But since I’d never been a research assistant, I didn’t have any idea what it would actually look like to have a research team.
In the last year, my undergrads (see them here 🤩) have moved more projects forward than I did in the three years before the lab existed. They’ve interviewed participants, coded data, run literature searches, drafted sections of manuscripts, and built tools the lab now uses week to week.
Most of what I learned about successfully engaging undergraduates in research is through my collaboration with Dr. Valerie Freeman and her Deaf Experience, Deaf Expression (DXDX) project. My lab runs following the system she developed for her lab (that we learned is called course embedded undergraduate research experience, CURE). Without the undergraduate students’ work, the projects managed would still be in the idea stage of my publication pipeline. The model works, and it works at the undergraduate level.
Phases of research and where undergrads fit
Undergraduates can contribute across the lifespan of a research project – from idea generation through disseminating the results.
Below I’ve broken research tasks into phases. For each phase below I’ve shared some tasks you can hand off to an undergraduate – even to those with little to no research experience. Even if your phases differ, I hope you see at least a few tasks you could hand off.
Lit Review.
A newer student can search for provided keywords in the library database, track citations and key details in a spreadsheet template, download selected items, and organize them into a shared drive. This requires minimal time from you since the university library staff can teach them how to use the library’s databases. A more experienced student can create a table to summarize key details across sources (i.e., definitions, methodology, results, etc.).
Study design.
Newer students can create recruitment graphics using IRB approved templates or proofread consent forms. Experienced students can draft different recruitment scripts for multiple platforms using IRB approved templates. Since their work begins with templates, your work is limited to revising and approving their drafts.
Data collection & cleaning.
Newer students can schedule participants and clean interview transcripts. Experienced students can conduct interviews and complete first-pass coding using your codebook.
Dissemination.
Newer students can create social media posts or format manuscripts to journal specs. Experienced students can co-author conference posters or present alongside you.
I’ve put together a longer list of tasks as a free download.
Why this is more sustainable than doing it all yourself
One hour of training generally returns 10-15 hours of work back to you.
The math only works if you build a system, not a series of one-off hand-offs. Here’s the structure I use in ATLAS:
- Weekly lab meeting. One hour. Students report progress to their teammates, ask questions, and get the next week of tasks – and get to work. The faculty member does a quick check-in with each team to keep track of progress. No one-on-one research assistant meetings.
- Students train each other. Returning students train the incoming students. Knowledge lives in the lab, not in your head.
- Documented protocols. Every team documents and updates their procedures and protocols in a shared drive. Re-training time drops because students have an easily accessible document to review and remember how to complete their tasks.
The lab practically runs itself with just one hour of your time weekly. You’ll be handing off more and writing more in no time!
Where to start with undergraduate research tasks this semester
You do not need a formal lab, a budget, or course release to begin.
Ok. Let’s be real. If it’s the middle of the semester you probably don’t have an undergraduate student available to become your research assistant today. So, you can take steps to prepare for next term. If you do have a student willing to jump in as a volunteer research assistant (or maybe you can get them enrolled in an end of semester independent study), get started as soon as possible.
Here are steps you can take to hand off your first research tasks to an undergraduate assistant.
- Brainstorm all tasks (ok, realistically lots, not all…who has time to list all of the tasks, lol) that need to be completed for your research projects
- Pick a handful of tasks that are on your plate right now that need to det done “next-ish” – but that don’t have to get done by you. It’s probably easiest to begin with repeatable tasks (i.e., download, rename, and organize the zoom recordings into the sharepoint drive; correct the transcript for each interview recording; send and respond to recruitment emails on the lab’s account; etc.)
- Star the top 3 of those that you’d like done as soon as possible
- Create a 1-2 sentence description of each of those 3 tasks.
- Give the task list & & description to your new research assistant for review and ask (email is fine!) which of those 3 tasks they’d like to start with.
- Once they’ve responded with a task, create a video explainer of how to complete the task – send it to the student for review and to practice. Tell them to send you questions if they’re confused about any part of the process.
- Then set up at least one meeting to check their progress and accuracy with the task.
Offer additional support as needed. I recommend co-working sessions where you’ll be together working independently, but available to answer questions as needed.
Now you’re all set, have this student document their procedures to support your next research assistant. If it’s a great experience with this student, ask them to return the following semester. This student can teach the new student to do the tasks they were doing, and you can give them a different task. Or you can train the new student on a different task that they can teach a new student. If you’re not sure what tasks to start a new student with, review the 20 Research Tasks Any Undergrad Can Do task list I put together.
Frequently asked questions
Do undergrads need to be paid?
Not always. Most of my undergraduate research assistants earn course credit through independent study or honors add-ons. Some campuses fund paid research assistantships through Undergraduate Research Program (UPR) offices or grants. Check with your department colleagues or the dean’s office at your institution to see what funding may be available.
What if my research uses sensitive or specialized data (like ASL video)?
Depending on the tasks your students complete they may not need CITI training. If students will be interacting with participant data, they likely will need CITI training. This will depend on your IRB protocol. It usually takes my research assistants 6-10 hours to complete the required CITI training for my projects. Each student only needs to complete it once; it’s good for 3 years. The refresher training is much shorter. You might want to assign tasks, initially, that do not require CITI training so students spend those 6-10 hours on other tasks that need to be completed. Once multiple students are working in your lab, the 6-10 hour training feels like less of a burden because research tasks are still being completed at higher rates than if you did not have research assistants.
How do I find students who are actually reliable?
Offering course credit for a grade is a pretty good motivator (more so than purely volunteer assistants). You can recruit from your classes and ask colleagues to share the opportunity with their classes. Initially I’d suggest inviting students who consistently show up to class and submit their work on time. Although, once you have more of a lab group, don’t count out other students. Because of the varied tasks available in a lab group, you’ll benefit from students with different skills, interests, and passions.
What if I don’t have a “lab” yet?
Just this year I realized, if you want a lab you just have to say you have it. 🤷You don’t need a room or a name. One faculty, one student, and a shared folder is a lab. The structure (weekly meetings, documented tasks, training) matters more for a successful lab experience than the branding.
How many students is too many?
I’ve had a range from 1 to 5 students working directly on my ATLAS team during a semester. My colleague Dr. Freeman’s lab has about 15-20 students now. The students are broken into specific project teams. From my experience, you’ll get the most benefit when you have enough students that they’re providing most of the support and training, and you’re providing the team and project management.
- Hale, K., & Freeman, V. (2025). Engaging ASL-English Interpreting Undergraduates in Research: A Model for Student Engagement and Faculty Productivity. Journal of Interpretation, 33(1). https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/joi/vol33/iss1/7
Navarro, M. (2026). Contextualizing Undergraduate Research: A Within-Subject Comparison of Student Learning Gains. The Journal of Higher Education, 0(0), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2026.2639915 ↩︎
