The 2026 Liberal Arts Undergraduate Research Awards (LAURAs) Reception took place on April 20 in the Howard Gittis Student Center. Students, faculty and donors came together to support research in the College of Liberal Arts and recognize the student-faculty duos comprising the summer 2025, fall 2025 and spring 2026 LAURA cohorts.
The Liberal Arts Undergraduate Research Awards (LAURAs) grant $2,000 each to undergraduate student-faculty member duos to conduct a research project over the course of a semester. Each student earns a $15/hour stipend from the grant while spending 100 hours on the project, enabling them to dedicate their time to developing research skills without worrying about their financial wellbeing.
Richard Deeg, the Christopher M. Barnett Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and Sandra Suarez, CLA Deputy Dean and director of the LAURA program, delivered welcoming remarks. “This is my favorite event every year,” said Suarez, “because it shows the breadth of knowledge—and the creation of knowledge—happening across this college.”
David Boardman, interim provost of Temple University and dean of the Klein College of Media and Communication, was also on hand as a guest speaker. In his remarks, Boardman thanked the donors who made the awards possible and the LAURA teams themselves for exemplifying the core tenets of Temple’s new strategic plan: student success, research in action and place-based impact.
Said Boardman, “The faculty student research teams in the LAURAs collectively demonstrate that the breadth and depth of inquiry across these disciplines really highlight the value of collaborative scholarship in addressing complex societal challenges.”
The event’s keynote speaker was Tania Giovanetti, professor in the Psychology and Neuroscience Department. During her introduction, Dean Deeg surprised Giovanetti by presenting her with the 2026 CLA Undergraduate Mentorship Award.
As director of the Cognitive Neuropsychology Laboratory, Giovanetti has mentored multiple LAURA recipients. As she explained, she knows firsthand how impactful research experience can be for undergraduates.
“I was an undergraduate research assistant in a laboratory, and the experience was so important for me,” said Giovanetti. “It taught me a love for research in neuropsychology that drove me to pursue the work myself. I carried that passion into my own research lab, where today we include undergraduates as part of the team in everything that we do.”
A selection of faculty-student teams was on hand to present their research, offering a small glimpse at the diversity of subject matter that the LAURAs encompass:
- Enhancing a School-Based Mental Health Intervention for Minoritized Youth; Medina Hucks-Gonsalves and Associate Professor Deborah Drabick (Psychology and Neuroscience)
- Mapping the Laws and Policies that Govern Organ Sales; Taneka Manhede and Assistant Professor Brian Hutler (Philosophy)
- Masculinity in Crisis? A Modern History of a Modern Anxiety; Travis Taylor and Associate Professor Katya Motyl (History)
- Philadelphia: Story Mapping Black Women’s Art and Literature; Ozioma Akosa and Associate Professor Casarae Abdul Chani (English)
- Digitizing the Development of the u.s. Public School; Erin Kamm and Associate Professor James Bachmeier (Sociology)
The afternoon’s proceedings concluded with Annette Bakley, Senior Vice Dean of Undergraduate Affairs, distributing the LAURAs to each student-faculty team. You can find a full list of recipients and their projects on the LAURAs page. Check out photos from the event at our Facebook gallery.