Office of Undergraduate Research
Legare 126
Phone: 803-777-1141
Email: our@sc.edu

USC Research Database Help page

The information below details each of the fields in the database search engine. If you still have questions or need assistance, please contact OUR.

Name:  Search by first or last name when looking for specific researchers.

Seeking:  Click "Y" to bring up only advertised positions. Recommendation: leave as "none" for broadest and most accurate searches. Most faculty members are willing to consider working with a student even if they are not actively seeking assistance. An icon will appear next to a researcher who is actively advertising a position, regardless of which category you are searching from.

College and/or Department:  This will pull up all individuals under the desired listing. However, this will miss individuals with similar interests in different departments. For example: College of the Environment will not display all researchers with an interest in the environment.
NOTE: You must choose a Campus (such as Columbia or Sumter) before you can choose a College or Department.

Position  indicates whether a researcher is a professor, instructor, staff, etc. Not useful for most student searches.

Affiliations  includes programs and centers on campus such as Women's Studies or Center for Asian Studies. You only need to type in a partial name for an effective search.

Interests:  Searching by interests will give you the greatest flexibility and will also pick up researchers across disciplines. For example: typing in "nano", pulls up researchers in Chemistry and English. Alternatively, you could type "nano" into Affiliations and pull up all the researchers affiliated with the NanoCenter (which should be the same but may not be).

Projects  also specifically refers to advertised positions. Searching by keywords under projects will only pull up advertised positions related to your keyword. Be careful when using this method as it may limit your opportunities. As before, most faculty members are willing to consider working with a student even if they are not actively seeking assistance.