For Faculty

While a Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) Team provides valuable research experience for undergraduate students, it can also operate as a comprehensive, multidisciplinary enterprise. While some students focus on technical research, others manage essential business and creative services, including graphic design, web and application development, public relations, and market research. 

As your team matures, experienced students will naturally transition into leadership roles—mentoring new members and leading sub-task meetings. This peer-leadership model significantly boosts productivity and allows your team to scale. When reviewing and "hiring" applicants, keep the long-term sustainability of each part of your project in mind.

VIP Teams do not have to be strictly academic or research-based. They can be established for a wide variety of pursuits, such as an entrepreneurial initiative to automate an administrative function or a student service.

Ultimately, our goal is to offer students a diverse array of multidisciplinary team experiences that mirror a professional work environment. Your VIP Team should be a space that reflects your unique interests and passions, whatever they may be.

To start a VIP team, simply login to the VIP Portal and complete your mentor profile and team profile.

Team Requirement and Scope

• Project Scope: Projects should have an inital scope of 3 to 5 years.
• Description: Keep the description general enough to allow your team's goals to evolve. You can edit this information at any time while your team is active.
• Interdisciplinary Focus: Projects should involve students from two or more majors.  You are welcome to be focused or open to all majors. 

Next Steps After Submission

Within 48 hours of submission, you will receive an email with further instructions. In most cases, this email will confirm that your team is approved and is live on the website.

• Schedule Weekly Meeting: Using the portal's Team Meeting Scheduler to select a 53-minute time slot. You can request a specific meeting room if you have one, or we can assign a room to you.
• Course Assignment: Once your meeting time is submitted, you will be assigned a matching section number for the following courses in the next available term: VIP 295, 395, 396, 495, 496, 595, 596, and 696.
  • These courses meet together at the same time and place for 53 minutes each week during the Fall and Spring terms.

Student Application and Admissions

Students can apply to join a VIP for the Fall or Spring terms.

• Application Window: Applications are open continuously, except between the third to seventh weeks of each term.  We cannot open your applications until you select your meeting time for next semester.  Once we open applications for the term, you may open and close your team's application at any time in VIP Portal.
• Reviewing Applicants: All mentors who indicate they wish to review emails notifications of applications will be able to admit or reject applications directly from the emails.  Alternately, any mentor may login into the portal to view all pending applications and make admission decisions.  By default, applications are name-blinded unless a mentor chooses to unblind them for the term.  Blinding is automatically applied each term and unblinding for a term cannot be reversed.
• Timeline: Please review applications as early as possible so that students you are unable to admit have time to apply to another team.

Grading and Team Management

Please review the Generic VIP Syllabus (Google Doc or MSWord) for grading standards and course details. You may copy or download one of these and customize it for your team.

The VIP Portal now integrates with your Google calendar to automatically add and remove members from your team meeting as they join and leave your team.  It is highly recommended that you activate the VIP Notebook assignment feature to assist in the documentation and assessment of student work.  It is a one-and-done on switch for the life of your team.  It currently tracks the documentation effort timeline of your students and will soon provide tools for AI-assisted feedback and assessment.  All students are required to complete two peer evaluations each semester in the portal and receive anonymized feedback after each evaluation window closes.  In the portal you are able to review peer evaluations in progress and the full history of past evaluation.  Our goal is to minimize course management overhead so you can focus on the experience and productivity of the team. With a small initial investment, mentoring a VIP Team is a highly productive and rewarding experience.