Sociology Undergraduate Research Program
SURP is a quarter-long program that gives current Sociology majors the opportunity to gain research experience and contribute to ongoing projects led by faculty and graduate students.
Participating students will receive course credit (SOC 499) according to the number of hours worked, or for completing specific tasks. Projects offer between 2 and 5 credits. All SOC 499 credits are graded C/NC.
SURP runs during Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer quarters. Please check this page for current project descriptions, which will update quarterly.
Applications for Summer 2026 open on May 11! Applications close on May 18, 2026. Students may apply to up to three projects each quarter. For more information, attend the SURP Info Session: Wednesday, May 13 at 4 p.m. in 245 Savery Hall.
Application timeline:
- May 11–18: Accepting applications for Summer 2026
- May 13, 4 p.m., SAV 245: SURP Info Session with Professor Kyle Crowder, Department Chair
- June 1–5: Applicants receive offers
Please carefully review the project descriptions and requirements below before applying.
Summer 2026 opportunities:
Project 1: Movement Capture During the Black Lives Matter Protest Period
Professor Jelani Ince (faculty mentor)
Project Goals: This project examines how philanthropy interacts with city & protest dynamics by investigating the funders and the causes that funders prioritized in their donations to BLM organizations before, during, and after BLM’s protest cycle (2012-2025). Central to the project are two questions: 1.) What is the relationship between protest activity and funding for social justice organizations? 2.) What impact does funding have on the programmatic priorities of the grantee organizations? The project will use a novel dataset of all private grants to 501c3 nonprofits earmarked for racial equity in 5 cities (n=12,000) and several public datasets to understand the mechanisms that inform greater funder control over the agendas of racial social movements.
Credit Hours: 3
Hiring: 2–3 students
Research Work:
Part 1:
- Clean and refine the dataset that contains information such as the grantee organizations, funders, amount of dollars donated, and the funded subject areas.
- Recreate a new taxonomy for the organizations
- Recode organizations that are incorrectly coded
- Notice trends for missing data
- Merge and refine different datasets on protest events, cities' police budgets, and city demographics.
- Create descriptive statistics
- Conduct regression analysis using these data.
Part 2:
- Analyze the foundation request for proposals (RFPs) and grantee mission statements/annual reports.
- Scrape the websites of funders and fundees
- Qualitatively code these documents
Required Skills:
- Proficiency in R and Python
- Experience cleaning, merging, refining, and coding datasets in R
- Knowledge of statistical methods, including conducting descriptive statistics and regression analysis in R
- Experience qualitatively coding and analyzing organizational documents
- Experience using large language models to analyze substantial bodies of text
Preferred Skills:
- Interest in working with a large amount of data, but familiarity with qualitative research sensibilities (ie meaning making, coding, categorizing)
- Interest in social movements and social change
Project 2: Media Coverage of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
Professor Theresa Rocha Beardall (faculty mentor)
Project Goals: Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls receive uneven public attention, and media coverage helps shape whose stories become visible, credible, and urgent. This project examines how news coverage frames these cases, whose voices appear in reporting, and how patterns of attention shift across outlets and time. Students will build a 40 year dataset of news articles and prepare it for qualitative coding.
Credits: 2–5
Hiring: 5–6 students
Research Work:
- Build a national inventory of Tribal and other relevant news outlets and archives, with publication metadata and access pathways
- Collect news articles on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls across the 40 year study window, using shared search and filing protocols
- Log each article in a structured dataset with standardized fields such as outlet, date, location, headline, and archive link
- Screen articles for inclusion using agreed criteria, documenting edge cases and decisions
Required Skills:
- Interest in Indigenous studies and gender justice
- Proficiency in G-Suite and Excel
- Strong English reading and writing skills
- Attention to detail
- Cultural awareness and sensitivity
Preferred Skills:
- Experience with qualitative data software
- Interest or experience in webscraping
Project 3: End of an Era? The Fight Over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education
Maxine Wright (graduate student mentor)
Project Goals: This study explores how DEI policies and practices have been negotiated and developed over time, as well as how people who work within DEI initiatives in higher education react to pushback and navigate larger structural constraints in their work.
Credits: 3
Hiring: 1–3 students
Research Work:
- Code archival dataset of presidential orders, relevant Supreme Court cases, and West Coast state-level initiatives related to (anti-)DEI efforts (codebooks provided)
Required Skills:
- High literacy and critical thinking skills
- Ability to delineate between relevant and non-relevant pieces of data
- Ability to use Microsoft Excel and Word as well as Google Sheets and Google Docs
- Access to a laptop or other computer with keyboard functionality and reliable internet access
Preferred Skills:
- Familiarity with principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Experience with DEI initiatives in higher education (through participation in certain RSOs or university-led opportunities for underrepresented students)
- Familiarity with Atlas.ti for ease of team coding (willing to train if there's no prior experience)
Applications will open on Monday, May 11th at 8am and close on Monday, May 18th at 11:59pm. Decisions will be released the week of June 1–5.
Understanding Homelessness in King County Project
WINTER 2026 SOC 499 B (SLN: 22158): Research Assistant Registration
We have opportunities for undergraduate students to join Professor Almquist's team working on counting unsheltered people experiencing homelessness, using respondent driven sampling (RDS). Several positions are available, and students decide how many credits they want to sign up for. The work commitment increases with each additional credit selected. The registration request form has additional details.
Description of Research
The initial research focuses on collecting data on people experiencing homelessness in King County. This data will be used to estimate the total number of people who are unsheltered in King County and analyze their characteristics. Data will also be collected on subgroups (e.g. by race, gender, veteran status, age, etc.) within the larger group.
Role of Undergraduate RAs in project
Undergraduate RAs will serve as data collectors. They will receive training on data collection procedures and sensitivity. After training, they will sit at tables at specific public library locations, receive respondents and set them up to take the surveys. The RAs will also manage referrals, tracking, and allocation of incentives.
To participate in this project, follow the steps below.
- Academic Credit Registration: SPR 2026 SOC 499 B SLN: 19570 RDS Registration Request Form