This award provides funds to the Psychology Department of Clark University to continue an REU Site project designed to build upon and make more effective a formal curriculum known as the Research Apprenticeship Program. It is hoped that this program can become a model for participatory undergraduate science education. The training model features apprenticeship, hands-on, elbow teaching, where students learn by actively participating in all phases of a research study--ideally from problem formulation to data collection and analysis to presentation at a professional meeting, manuscript preparation and publication. Students may work with one of 19 Faculty Associates, whose interests collectively address biological, psychological, and sociocultural aspects of behavior and represent the full spectrum of university-level scholarship in psychology, from neuroanatomy to literary analysis, from work with animals to studies of people in foreign cultures. Specific features of the proposed project include (1) funding summer research, (2) scheduling University Conferences and Summer Seminars to promote collegial scientific discourse with and among students, (3) funding student paper presentations at professional meetings, and community, particularly to women, blacks, and hispanics. These features support the principal goal of the REU program, to promote careers in scientific research.
