This award is to continue a program, initiated by the NSF-REU Chemistry Leadership Group several years ago, which has provided travel support to REU and LSAMP participants for the purpose of allowing them to present their research at the Spring National American Chemical Society Meetings.
The NSF-REU Leadership Group Travel Awards Program will partially fund undergraduates from REU and LSAMP programs to attend the spring National American Chemical Society Meeting. Mentors of these students who need travel support will also be offered a small stipend. Besides presenting their research, these undergraduates will also attend programs that have been designed to provide support and guidance in what, for many of them, will be their first intense interaction with the scientific community beyond their home and research institutions. The support programs will include a welcome session to introduce recipients and mentors to the Leadership Group, to the NSF, and to other award recipients, as well as an awards luncheon at which a well-known chemist will speak, with the intent of providing a specific welcome of the award recipients to the wider community of chemists.
The NSF-REU Chemistry Leadership Group Travel awards grant for 2013-2014 was designed to provide support for at least 50 undergraduate chemists, who had participated in REU or LSAMP sponsored research, to present their research at the 2014 National American Chemical Society (ACS) Meeting in Dallas in March of 2014. It is important to the training of an undergraduate chemist that they become aware and develop an identification with the community of chemist beyond their home institution. The ACS Meeting, with thousands of presentations, and often 1200 or more undergraduate presentations, is an ideal venue for this introduction. In order to enhance the undergraduate scientists’ experience of the ACS Meeting, the grant also provided support for up to one mentor per award recipient to accompany the recipient to the ACS Meeting. Because many mentors were able to support their own travel, or could not attend the meeting with their mentees, the award finally funded 56 undergraduates and 20 mentors in their attendance of the meeting. Several other students were offered travel awards, but did not appear at the meeting, and were therefore not funded. The Travel Award programs at the ACS Meeting were given in two parts, the first being a welcoming reception, in which the award recipients and their mentors were invited to meet their peers, as well as other mentors, members of the Chemistry REU Leadership Group, and representatives of the NSF. While 76 awardees and mentors were invited, we had approximately 95 people in attendance, with all of the support organizations well represented. The Chair of the NSF REU Leadership Group welcomed the awardees to the meeting, and encouraged them to take full advantage of the opportunities available to them. The second event of the Travel Awards program at the ACS meeting was the awards luncheon. At this luncheon, Professor Gloria Thomas, of LSU, was the featured speaker. Professor Thomas, with her extensive experience in undergraduate research support, with the REU program, and with the Chemistry REU Leadership Group, was an ideal speaker, as she spoke to the students in such a way that she became a very effective role model of scientist and involved citizen. The Awardees and their mentors found this program to be very effective, and a number of them spoke personally to Professor Thomas after the luncheon. The Travel awardees came from 47 different home institutions and 39 different research (REU or LSAMP) sites, so the geographical coverage of the program was fairly effective. Only eight of the recipients self-identified as being from LSAMP programs. While 25 travel awards were allocated to LSAMP participants, if this many applications were received, the timing of the announcement of the program (mid-October), controlled by the authorization date of the award, made it very difficult to communicate with scientists at the LSAMP institutions, because of the LSAMP administrative structure. This late announcement date meant that, to a large extent, the Travel Award applications came from people who had already submitted their abstracts before the award announcement was made. If the Travel Award program is re-initiated, it would be very helpful to the goals of the program if the announcement could be made in July or August, rather than October, so that students who would otherwise not consider going to the ACS Meeting can see their way clear to plan to attend. The dedication was the REU community to being an inclusive community was evident in the great diversity of both the awardees and their mentors.
