The Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program at the Institute for Astronomy (IfA) at the University of Hawaii will be continued for an additional three years and will expand beyond the island of Oahu to include faculty mentors at the IfA Hilo and staff astronomers at Gemini North Observatory on the island of Hawaii. Each year, ten undergraduates from across the country will spend their summer carrying out cutting-edge research in areas including solar, planetary, stellar, star-formation and extragalactic astronomy. The students will give a talk on their work to the IfA staff at an REU symposium at the end of the summer and will present a poster at a national meeting during the following fall or winter. The students will also take part in a multi-wavelength observing project using the University of Hawaii 88-inch optical/infrared telescope and the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory on Mauna Kea. In addition to the mentored research and observing experience, there will be a research seminar given by IfA faculty and weekly lunch meetings with the PIs and graduate students.
The REU astronomy program at Hawaii has served as an important vehicle for minority student participation in science: in the seven years of operation to date, the percentage of female and ethnic minority students has been 66% and 17% respectively. Over the three year lifetime of this program, it is anticipated that 30 talented undergraduates will receive an outstanding research experience, including participating in observing runs at optical and radio wavelengths at the best astronomy site in the United States and exposure at a national meeting.
This site is co-funded by the Department of Defense in partnership with the National Science Foundation REU program.
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Summary and Intellectual Merit: The Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program at the Institute for Astronomy (IfA) at the University of Hawaii has run for 11 years ending with a no cost extension in the summer of 2012. 120 undergraduate students were able to spend ten weeks of summer at one of the Institute’s 3 headquarters in Hawai`i (on O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, and Maui islands), doing excellent research under the mentorship of one of more than thirty faculty or post-doctoral students. Beside the mentored research, in the last four years, the students were also able to use the 2-meter Faulkes Telescope North (part of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network) for their own research and experience. The program continued to grow over the years, starting on one Island and gradually expanding to the full institute on all three islands. We began collaborating with the Gemini North Telescope in 2006 which allowed all of our students to observe the operation of one of the world’s premier telescopes by being present at the start of a night of observing. In some cases, students were able to tag-along with their mentors on observing runs on Maunakea, but this was not always possible, so the Gemini visit helped give all the students a bit of this experience. The `Imiloa Astronomy Center became a part of our summer program in 2009 and helped to introduce Hawaiian culture to our guests though an organized program day at the Center. Some of our students took advantage of the world class 3-D planetarium there at `Imiloa and presented general public lectures on various topics during the mid-summer visit. The mentors and students were urged to prepare projects which could yield publishable results with the aim for the students to attend a professional meeting (usually the Winter AAS meeting) to present the results of their summer research projects. Over the full duration of the grant, approximately 70% of those projects were published in the meeting proceedings of the AAS and about half of that yielded journal publications. For example, during the last no-cost year of the grant, we had 7 students and 6 attended meetings. The projects were of such high caliber that 2 of the 5 AAS attendees were awarded honorable mention at the meeting for their poster presentations. In addition to the mentored research and observing experience, a weekly research seminar given by IfA faculty and a lunch meeting with the PIs and graduate students were organized each week. Group tours were also organized to introduce the culture and astronomy of the Native Hawaiians to the REU students. Finally, the students gave talks on their work to the entire IfA (two islands connected by polycom) at an REU symposium at the end of the summer. This was a nice precursor to presenting their work at a professional meeting during the following fall or winter. Broader Impacts: Over the eleven year lifetime of the program, One hundred and twenty talented undergraduates received outstanding research experience, including participating in observing runs at optical and radio wavelengths at the best astronomy site in the United States and exposure at a national meeting. Most of the students began graduate studies within one or two years after the end of the program. Timothy F. Slater at the University of Wyoming has been our external evaluator since the project began and the feedback he obtained over the years has helped to shape the grant and make corrections. He has also kept track of each of our students over the years and a breakdown of the statistics of the 120 former students is as follows: There have been 25 Ph.D.s (in astronomy/Physics) 7 have gone into Science Industry (4 in Aerospace) with 35 currently pursuing a Ph.D. Eight of our former students are listed as missing or out of science. Two students have gone on to receive MDs and one has attained a Ph.D. in Neurobiology. 2 Hubble fellows and 1 Rhodes Scholar were once our students. 30 of our alumni have applied for our graduate program, seven successfully with one currently a graduate student. One of those 25 Ph.D.s now holds a post-doctoral appointment here at the IfA and was one of the last summer session’s mentors. The rest of our students are now in graduate or undergraduate programs across the US. The REU astronomy program at Hawaii has also served as an important vehicle for minority student participation in science: in the eleven years of operation to date, the percentage of female and ethnic minority students has been 64% and 15% respectively.
