An award has been made to San José State University that will provide research training for 10 weeks for 10 students, for the summers of 2010-2012. The REU program, called Research by Undergraduates using Molecular Biology Applications (RUMBA), will focus its efforts on increasing the number of underrepresented minority students doing biological research in the Silicon Valley. The REU focuses on utilizing molecular biology tools in biological research. Faculty members with expertise in the areas of genetics, molecular evolution, molecular environmental microbiology, cell & molecular biology, and forensics will mentor students. Regardless of the research laboratory placement, RUMBA students will comprise a cohort with shared thematic training experiences. The cohort experiences will consist of: (1) molecular biology techniques training, (2) a bi-weekly formal group research meeting, (3) an ethics seminar, and (4) a culminating research symposium. Students will be recruited from San José State University and other undergraduate institutions with high enrollment of underrepresented minority students. Priority will be given to students of underrepresented groups as defined by NSF (African American, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander). Students will be selected based on GPA, completion of the first year university biology and chemistry core course sequence, letters of recommendation, and a personal statement. Student applicants will be interviewed by RUMBA faculty before a decision is made. A common web-based assessment instrument will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. San José State University (SJSU), the oldest public university in the state of California, is located in downtown San José and in the heart of Silicon Valley. Students interested in participating in the RUMBA should contact Dr. Julio G. Soto, Professor, Biological Sciences Department, jsoto3@email.sjsu.edu. Application forms and deadlines can be found at: www.sjsu.edu/depts/Biology/RUMBA/RUMBA.html.
Eighty-percent of students we recruited were rising sophomores or rising juniors at the time they participated in our program. Although, most of our students were not SJSU students, we recruited a mixture of SJSU and other undergraduate colleges/universities students. Our experience showed that this strategy was ideal. Local students formed strong social interactions with outside students. Although, programmed social activities were part of the program, local students took upon themselves to show our outside participants different sites of the Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay Area during the weekends. This reduced the level of homesickness that some of our sophomore-level students experienced during the duration of our program. Fifty-eight percent of the student particioants were female and 69% were underrepresented (Latino/a, African American, Pacific Islander, and people with physical disabilities). We have also recruited three non-traditional college students, two with physical disabilities, and one veteran from the first Iraq War. Most (99%) of the students that participated in our BIO REU since 2004 were from primarely undergraduate institutions (PUI). Of those, 6 (8%) were from community colleges, 9 (13%) were from private liberal arts colleges, and 57 (79%) were students from public PUIs. We exposed our cohort to the scientific community on campus, regional, and at the national level. Faculty mentors, M.S. graduate students, and other undergraduate students doing research in the summer attended research presentations prepared by our SJSU REU student participants. Regionally, we hosted the Second Bay Area Regional Biology REU Symposium. One of our students presented a 10-minute oral presentation at the symposium. At the national level, we mentored our students in the process of conference preparation, poster preparation and presentation. All SJSU REU participants present their research in a poster format at the national SACNAS conference. At the end of the program students wrote a five-page (10 primary research articles) review paper about their research topic. Our science librarian introduced our participants to library research and journal databases. We were able to identify an improvement in technical writing ability by the end of the 10-week program. Oral communication skills were also improved. Students learned to prepare and present seminars, answer technical questions about their research and predict outcomes. Our 2010-2012 REU participants received excellent reviews on their presentation skills from judges at the national SACNAS Conferences. Ten of our past participants have received awards for their poster presentations.
