Registering for Research Credit

Before reading this section, make sure to read the Getting Started page as it answers many of the common questions about BIOS/NEUR undergraduate research, starting your search, research course prerequisites, credit toward the major, etc..

How do I register for BIOS 310 or NEUR 310? 

Prior to registering for credit you will have to have secured a research lab and a faculty host willing to mentor you for a Rice research course. If you have not found a lab, please visit the section on Finding Research Opportunities.

BIOS 310

BIOS 310 registration instructions differ depending on the location of your lab. In all cases, you must have secured a lab prior to registration.

    • If your hosting professor is a primary or joint member of the Biosciences faculty, you will ask your hosting professor to override the registration restrictions allowing you to register for their section.
    • If your professor works at Rice but is not affiliated with the Dept. of Biosciences,  you will need to secure a BioSciences faculty sponsor.
    • If your hosting professor is based off-campus in a non-Rice Texas Medical Center institution, the timeline below will apply:

Timeline for BIOS 310 off-campus (non-Rice) TMC research:

    1. You secure a research host (~2+ months ahead of the start of classes).
    2. You begin paperwork for your hosting institution (some institutions take 2-4 months to process).
    3. You apply for off-campus BIOS 310 using the BIOS 310 off-campus application* (at least 3 weeks before the start of the semester you wish to enroll).
    4. We review your application to ensure that 1) your proposed project is sufficiently biologically focused, 2) that you have the required prerequisites or qualifying prior biological research experience, 3) that you will have sufficient access to mentorship, 4) your schedule is sufficiently light to allow you time to adjust to your lab and the course requirements (some returning BIOS 310 students can handle heavier schedules).
    5. Your off-campus professor responds to the auto-email generated by your application and confirms that they are willing to host you for BIOS 310.
    6. We override your registration restrictions on Esther allowing you to register.
    7. You register for BIOS 310. The system defaults to 1 credit so you will need to go back in and adjust variable credit to 3+ credits.
    8. We generate Rice-TMC inter-institutional paperwork confirming that you will be enrolled in BIOS 310 in conjunction with your TMC research. Paperwork sent will be a form (for BCM) or a letter (for UTHealth/McGovern). Please don’t send us paperwork to complete for BCM or UTHealth as we will initiate these within a week after we’ve given you permission to register. We will wait to hear from Methodist whether they need a form from us or not.

NEUR 310

Once you have found a lab that will accept you, you must fill in out this online application. This will send an email to you, your prospective PI, and the NEUR 310 course instructor. Your prospective PI should then reply to the email and let the NEUR 310 course instructor know that accept you into the lab (PLEASE NOTE – The application should not be the first request to work with the PI! You should essentially know that you will be joining the lab before sending the application). Once the NEUR 310 course instructor receives the confirmation, he or she will open up registration over Esther. Be sure to adjust the number of hours you are taking under “Registration/Change Variable Course Credit” in Esther after you sign up.

BIOS 299

for all bio-related off-campus experiential education opportunities (not necessarily research)

If you have secured an internship opportunity that may not fit into the requirements of BIOS 310 or NEUR 310, you can consider applying instead for BIOS 299: Experiential Education in Biosciences. Most activities relating to biology or science in general will qualify for BIOS 299. Some examples include, science policy, clinical research, science education, research in a lab or biotech company, environmental analysis for an environmental non-profit. Unlike the research courses, BIOS 299 activities are not restricted to Houston.

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*The BIOS 310 application form is only for off-campus research. Those in Biosciences faculty labs will register directly through your professor’s section. If you wish to perform BIOS 310 research with a Rice faculty member who is not a Biosciences primary or joint faculty member, you will need to find a Biosciences research faculty member willing to sponsor your out-of-department research.