But the task of creating an interesting summer intern program does not fall exclusively on the professor. Although professors usually initiate the idea for a project, it is the students who must rise to the academic challenge. With only a few weeks to become "experts" in their newly-assigned fields, student often spend the beginning of the summer in the libraries.

Spare Funding

If funds are available, most professors choose to pay their undergraduates out of their own research grants. The University also has a faculty assistance fund that supports student interns for limited amounts of time. If such funds are not available, students must finance their own research through grants and scholarships. This most commonly occurs when undergraduates work on their own projects, such as theses, for which they simply need a professor's guidance or assistance.

But professors says that these financial resources are not always that easy to obtain. "I know of very few funds available for [undergraduate internships]," Jaffe says.

"I think a lot more professors would gladly participate if there were the money to fund it," Gabrielse explains.

But for all their hard work, summer research assistants do not go unrewarded. Even when monetary funds are sparse, research jobs can provide experience--not to mention letters of recommendation--that can prove invaluable to further academic pursuits.

"If I can write a letter of recommendation and say that so and so worked in my lab and didn't break anything expensive, and really accomplished something, I think that letter is taken seriously at the other end," says Gabrielse.