The REU site at Baruch College offers advanced research training to undergraduate students who attend Baruch College and other educational institutions in the New York metropolitan area. Each REU student conducts independent research under the supervision of an REU faculty member working in an area that matches the student's expressed interests (e.g., social psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, developmental psychology, psychometrics, and sleep), as well as joining that faculty member's research team. Each student focuses on one area of psychology, planning and executing studies with the intention of presenting papers at professional conferences and submitting manuscripts to quality peer-reviewed journals. The REU students review the literature and develop research questions and hypotheses that are grounded in the literature. They design research projects to gather data that address the empirical questions. The REU students execute the research protocols that they develop. Students learn the value of statistical analyses and become comfortable with the use of computer programs for describing and drawing inferences from data. Students also gain experiences in the art of research dissemination and presentation. The results of this research are presented at the Baruch REU conference and potentially at national conferences and peer-reviewed journals. REU students complete a series of structured learning activities aimed at preparing them to be involved in all stages of psychological research and apply to graduate school.
Broader Impacts Statistics from the NSF and the American Psychological Association indicate continual under-representation of African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and individuals with disabilities in the field of psychology. This program is designed to increase the representation of minority, low-income, first generation college students, and disabled students in scientific psychology. Specifically, the program does the following: 1) prepare students for advanced graduate training in psychology and ultimately for careers in academic settings, 2) identify early promising minority, disabled, and economically disadvantaged students throughout the New York metropolitan area and prepare them for careers in scientific psychology, 3) increase psychological scientists exposure to cultural and minority issues in psychological research, and 4) develop a pipeline to provide a pool of talented and diverse undergraduate students to become the research scientists of the future. In summary, this REU Site program serves as a model for offering research experiences to undergraduate students from underrepresented groups attending urban universities and colleges.
The REU program at Baruch College of City University of New York (CUNY) is designed to educate and train college students in psychological science. The program aims at offering direct and intensive research training to undergraduates enrolled in CUNY or in other colleges in New York City metropolitan area so that they can develop research skills in science. The second goal of the program is to identify early promising students (with a focus on those from underrepresented groups) and prepare them for careers in scientific psychology. The third goal is to go beyond the domain of Baruch College or CUNY and reach out to a diverse ethnic, social, cultural, and economic population in the New York metropolital area so that we can provide a pool of diverse students to become research scientists in the future. Throughout the period of the grant, REU students worked closely with their respective REU faculty members joining their labs. Under the supervision of their advisors, REU students conducted their independent research projects by coming up with new research questions, setting up hypotheses, preparing experimental stimuli, collecting and analyzing data. At the end of every academic year, REU students presented the results of their studies during the annual REU conferences. Many of them made steps further and presented their studies in regional or national professional conferences such as American Psychological Association (APA), Association for Psychological Sciences (APS), Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), Eastern Psychological Association (EPA), New England Psychological Association, among others. The REU program at Baruch also offered students direct and professional guidance to help them become competitive for entry into graduate programs in psychology or other scientific disciplines. Every cohort of REU students had a semester-long weekly seminar led by the program director. During the seminar, students and the program director had discussions about every aspect of the graduate school application process. Every student completed at least one complete graduate school application while developing and refining his or her CV. The REU faculty particularly encouraged students to attend regional or national professional conferences so that our students could have an opportunity to get exposed to the researchers community. We believe that it would provide a unique and invaluable chance for REU students to experience and learn cutting-edge research in psychological science while personally meeting with leading scholars and graduate students in the same field. As expected, after returning from the conferences, students became more motivated to commit themselves to scientific research in psychology. Most, if not all, students in our program would not have been able to enjoy this opportunity without the REU program. The individual research projects conducted by REU students (under the supervision of their faculty members) made contributions to advancing the understanding of psychological processes and human behavior in such areas as social psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, and industrial and organizational psychology. The three cohorts of students in the program (34 in total) delivered 26 poster-presentations in regional and national psychological conferences. In addition, one paper (co-authored by an REU student and her REU advisor) has recently been accepted and publshed in an academic journal. We think that a body of research projects conducted by our students has made solid contributions in theory, research, and practice. In addition, such a work will affect and guide the way in which future research is conducted. More notably, we have been very successful in helping our students enter graduate programs in psychology or other related disciplines to further study the subjects matters and pursue their careers as professional researchers. Among the three cohorts of students (34 in total) selected to participate in the regular REU program, 24 students (70.5%) have enrolled in graduate programs (16 doctoral and 8 master's programs) and 2 students (6%) are in predoctoral research fellow positions in prestigious research Center such as Harvard and Columbia University. This statistics indicates that over three quarters of REU students in the program during this grant period have successfully gotten into graduate schools, which is substantially higher than the national average rate. The Baruch REU program also intended to reach out to diverse populations in the local area. We believe that we have fulfilled such a goal as well. More than half the students in the program come from ethnic, cultural, or socioeconomic minorities. We take pride in making a pipeline to introduce quality students from underrepresented backgrounds into a profession that is currently without adequate representation of individuals from these groups. We believe that the REU program at Baruch has continued to accomplish the goals that we wanted to achieve during this grant period. We are very grateful to the National Science Foundation for provide the support for fulfilling the missions that we have had. We will make every effort to continue to accomplish our goald in years to come.
