This award provides funds to the Department of Biology at Wake Forest University to establish a Research Experiences for Undergraduates SITE. The program will be a 10 week research experience in which the interests of the students will be matched with those of appropriate faculty advisers in the Department. In conjunction with the research program, the students will be exposed to a wide range of research expertise through weekly seminars and two, overnight field trips. Additional time will be spent in learning elementary statistics, experimental design, slide preparation, etc. During the last two weeks of the research period, the students will be joined by their Mentors from the home institution. In this way, the students can share their research experiences with faculty with who they will spend the majority of their remaining academic career. These faculty members will be able to gain first-hand knowledge of the student's research and, hopefully, sustain the research momentum during the following academic year(s). The summer's research activities will culminate in an all day colloquium at which time the students will formally present the results of their work. In order to encourage and facilitate maximum student-student interaction, they will be quartered in one of the University's residential houses throughout the summer.
