Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program

MURAP was sparked in 1989 when three students who were majoring in humanities disciplines applied to the Summer Pre-Graduate Research Apprentice Program (a program for STEM research) and expressed interest in a summer research experience at UNC-Chapel Hill. The three students were housed in UNC’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities while pursuing research projects with a faculty mentor. Over the next few years, the program grew to support students in social sciences and humanities each year and officially became the Minority Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program. In 1996, a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided substantial support for expanding and sustaining the program. 

In 2002, the program was moved to the Institute of African American Research (IAAR), in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. In 2022, MURAP moved with the IAAR to the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, where we are currently housed and where the program is administered through.

In 2003, MURAP was named to honor the program’s first Ph.D. recipient, Dr. Mignon Moore.

After 24 years of generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, support for the program is now provided by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the program continues to thrive.

MURAP fellows are selected from colleges and universities across the United States to be part of a ten-week, research intensive, graduate school professional development experience at UNC-Chapel Hill. Over the course of 10 weeks, students work with faculty mentors to produce an original research project.

The research process is supported by a core set of classes including writing and research, communication and research presentation skills, professional development activities in partnership with the Graduate School at Carolina, and GRE classes through Princeton Review. 

Additionally, each fellow is assigned a librarian with expertise in their research area, and access to UNC-Chapel Hill’s extensive library system.

Fellows and faculty mentors meet each Tuesday to present their research. Additionally, fellows present their completed project at the end-program poster symposium.

• Financial support through a stipend.
• MURAP is a residential program and provides free campus housing. Each fellow has their own room in a suite that includes a kitchen. MURAP’s community builder resides with the students in campus housing.
• Fellows have access to UNC student health and counselling services.
• Fellows may purchase meal plans offered through Carolina Dining Services, on-campus parking, and access to the gym.
• Through the Carolina Graduate School’s SUP program, students who have been MURAP fellows receive a fee waiver on their graduate school application to UNC-Chapel Hill.

The annual two-day MURAP conference convenes under a theme that speaks to current events, and brings together established scholars, artists, and practitioners who represent the research interests of the cohort.

Fellows attend presentations by invited speakers but also have the opportunity to dialogue outside the presentations. The conference provides students with a glimpse of an important aspect of academic life: the presentation of work to an interdisciplinary and critical academic audience.

program, students who have been MURAP fellows receive a fee waiver on their graduate school application to UNC-Chapel Hill.

Each summer, MURAP Student Fellows conduct research under the mentorship of a faculty member. Students present their research at a weekly seminar. Starting in 2020, UNC Libraries added a MURAP collection in the Carolina Digital Repository consisting of the summer scholars' final research papers.

View the MURAP research collection