The University of Minnesota has been granted an NSF award to support the continuation of the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site for geosciences in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since 1998, the 10 week UMN summer intern program in the Dept. of Geology and Geophysics has focused on research concerning geological fluids from surface and near-surface systems to the mantle to the core. Fourteen undergraduate students will be recruited nationally each year. The students will investigate topics with the common theme of fluids in the Earth. They will be involved in various research activities, including the impacts of human activities on groundwater quality, limnogeology research on lakes to understand regional environmental dynamics, evaluation of the chemical and mechanical effects of fluids in metamorphic and igneous systems, seismic detection of fluids and melts in Earth's mantle, the effect of melt on deformation of mantle rocks, and numerical hands-on experience with mantle convection and core dynamics using scientific visualization, and more. The program features many attributes that foster a cohort experience. In particular, interns participate in a weekly series of lectures given by participating faculty and in symposia in which they explain their projects and results to each other and to members of the department. In addition, they are exposed to disciplines outside their summer research and by participating in field trips to Midwestern sites (caves, glacial lake/river features, mid-continent rift lavas, deep underground observatories). An important goal of the internship program is to integrate the interns into the research environment of the Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, allowing interactions with faculty, post-docs, and graduate students in the various research groups of the department. The program also fosters a sense of community among the summer students as they interact with future Earth science colleagues and friends. Interns live in university housing with contiguous room assignments and shared cooking facilities and the program includes weekend activities such as picnics, boating on Lake Superior, and camping trips. Program activities emphasize the connections and commonality of research carried out in diverse research fields.
The NSF grant for which this report is submitted supported a REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) internship program located at the University of Minnesota (UMN) during the summer of 2010. The UMN Fluids in the Earth from Surface to Core REU site hosted 14 students from around the country during the summer of 2010. Interns were selected from an application pool of 71. They conducted projects in a wide variety of topics from numerical modeling of ocean biogeochemistry to rock and mineral physics experiments on grain boundary slip. They participated in three field trips: (1) karst geomorphology and caves in southeast Minnesota; (2) R/V Blue Heron cruise on Lake Superior; (3) Precambrian geology in north central Minnesota. Trips 2 and 3 were combined with an overnight stay in Duluth at a local college dormitory. The interns also participated in weekly lunch seminars presented by departmental faculty, mid-program meetings, and final poster sessions. In 2010, we ultimately made 16 offers to secure 14 interns. The offers were made to the most academically well prepared applicants from around the country. The high rate of success in recruiting reflects our excellent reputation and also the efficiency and effectiveness with which the program made admission decisions and communicated with the prospective interns. Given the high quality of our interns, the contribution of this program to human development is very significant. As shown in our tracking of interns and exit survey results, the majority of participants view their REU internship a person experiment regarding graduate school. Indeed many go on to research careers in graduate school and beyond and many pursue specialties directly related to research experience in our program. Our program continues to attract an extremely strong pool of applicants. With only two rejecting our offer of 16 to fill the 14 slots, we can be very selective. As noted above, in future years, we will make a more concerted effort to diversify our program with regard to minority participation. Our 2010 interns had an average GPA in their home institutions of 3.6, excluding the academic record of an intern from Brown University, which does not provide GPA. Of the 14 interns, 10 were women. This is consistent with and somewhat higher than the 13-year average of 62% female participation. The success of our program for the single year of 2010 supported by this grant is somewhat difficult to assess because many interns are still undergraduates or have not decided on their career plans after college. Typically we do not obtain meaningful post-internship data until a few years after the internship. And many interns do not go on to graduate school immediately following undergraduate graduation but take 1-2 years to do something else before resuming their studies. Our tracking to date indicates that of the 14 interns, An intern from Oberlin College will be a graduate student in our program with her original internship advisor. This reflects our continued success in attracting interns into our graduate program. An intern from Bethel University will become a graduate student at the University of Minnesota but in a field of engineering. An intern from Brown University will continue in the field of her internship and become a fluvial geologist with the GeoCorps after graduation. She will be stationed in the Medicine Bowe - Routt National Forest in Colorado. An intern from University of Virginia was accepted to our graduate program but has decided to start graduate work at Stanford University in geosciences. An intern from W. Carolina University will be working for a well logging company. Some will be participating again in summer internship programs elsewhere. In a few years, we expect to be able to fill in the gaps with regard to future career directions of the 2010 interns. On the basis of exit surveys, our 2010 program was very successful. Some of the themes that emerge from paragraph-style responses include: 1) Interns had an overall very positive experience with their research and their interactions with faculty mentors. As in all previous years, interns in particularly had very good relationship with our excellent student support staff . 2) Weekly journals showed how interns appreciated their mini-graduate school experience, commenting on how their perception of science has changed from standard scientific method to something that is more messy and serendipitous but very exciting. Group orientation to science ethics and struggles with unexpected barriers reinforced the notion of a living science. 3) The interns very much enjoyed the cohort experience of living in the same dorm, cooking together, weekly seminars, and participating in program-sponsored field trips. The trips in particular were very effective in fostering a cohort experience and cohesion amongst the interns. Many have noted how the mid-program meeting, where they discussed the motivation for their projects, facilitated their understanding of their work.
