This award supports an REU program at Texas Christian University (TCU), which would involve 6-7 undergraduate students in 10 weeks of workshops and research in Physics or Astrophysics. The main goal of the program is to provide a memorable and potentially career-defining experience for student participants A carefully mentored research program, thoughtfully-selected field trips, weekly discussions with other students and faculty, and workshops on ethics in science, effective presentation and planning for graduate school, culminating in a final oral research presentation, provide opportunities for students to consider a broad range of career possibilities in physics and engineering fields. The expectation is that participants will give post-summer presentations of research at a professional science conference. TCU has a reputation for providing a nurturing learning environment with a low student-to-faculty ratio. This award is supported by the Physics Division and the Division of Social and Economic Sciences.
The TCU Physics & Astronomy Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program has a major purpose to provide mentoring, training and experience for undergraduate students in scientific research. One important goal of the TCU REU program is to reach out especially to women, under-represented minorities, and students from smaller schools with limited opportunities for exposure to high-impact research. This REU site grant funded 26 students over the course of four summers (2009-2012). The student cohorts were 73% from under-represented groups in Physics & Astronomy, including 42% women, 19% african american, 12% hispanic, 8% native american, and 4% biracial students. The large percentages of under-represented groups is not surprising given that the TCU Physics and Astronomy REU program focused on students from smaller schools with less access to research opportunities. Students worked in the fields of Astrophysics, Biophysics, Atomic & Molecular Physics, Computation Physics, Materials Physics, Physical Chemistry and Planetary Science. Students worked on projects such as such as, classifying meterorites using the TCU's Monnig Meteorite collection, the modeling of chaotic motions, testing of nano-materials. One project even resulted in being used to target stars as part of the NSF-funded Sloan Digital Sky Survey III program, which is one of the largest astronomy projects in world. Over 80% of the TCU REU students supported by this grant are working in STEM fields or toward STEM degrees, with at least 50% having been accepted into STEM Graduate schools.While these numbers may be lower than other high profile programs, we see this as a success, given or focus on students that are likely to leave the without REU program types of involvement. One of our students from this grant recently emailed: "I wouldn't be here is it weren't for my time at TCU. My experience with your REU was one of the greatest summers in my life, and is where I discovered that I wanted to be a research physicist. I had never been in a real lab until I came to TCU and now I have been to some of the best labs in the world because of it."
