This award supports the CyberInfrastructure for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets REU Site (CReSIS-REU) with a focus in areas of polar science and cyberinfrastructure (CI). Students participating in the CReSIS REU site will be assigned to research teams within the CReSIS Science and Technology Center. The project will engage 20 students annually in both center-based research training and professional development activities. Follow-up activities begin after the 8-week internship when participants will be involved virtually in CReSIS lectures, seminars, training, and All Hands events. The program will provide summer educational opportunities, for undergraduate students, in the area of cyberinfrastructure and polar science and will attract a diversified pool of talented students into careers in science, and engineering, including teaching and research related to polar science and cyberinfrastructure. The intellectual merit of the CReSIS-REU site is that it will be interdisciplinary and educational in focus and make innovative cost effective use of cyberinfrastructure. The project builds upon novel partnerships across the discipline areas of radars, engineering, modeling of ice sheets, and cyber-infrastructure. The broader impacts of this REU Site are that it will support activities in science, education, diversity and outreach and will train the next generation of scientists, engineers and educators interested in polar science and cyberinfrastructure. The vision for this project is driven by the compelling need to draw on integration of research and education to attract a diverse pool of talented students into engineering, polar science and cyberinfrastructure related careers including teaching and educational research. The project will involve 60 undergraduate students over the three-year period.
This site is supported by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU program.
The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets-Research Experience for Undergraduates (CReSIS-REU) Site program (NSF REU ANT-0944255) was funded February 2010 through February 2012. A no-cost extension was approved through March 2014. During those years, 109 students participated. Highlights from each year of the CReSIS-REU program, including participants, projects, research training activities, schedules, professional development activities, seminars, mentors and staff, can be found at http://nia.ecsu.edu/ureomps.html. This was a highly effective REU site, and it reflected the NSF commitment to the principle of diversity, which was deemed central to the operation. Intellectual Merit: REU projects focused on CReSIS-related science. These include the design of lightweight sleds and improved access to CReSIS data. Other REU students conducted a validation of the 2003 Antarctic Grounding Line through the use of ENVI and several follow-on projects, which resulted in the discovery of an ice shelf that had gradually shrunk from 1972 to 2003 and has failed to reform. The feature is a former ice shelf occupying an embayment along the southern side of Canisteo Peninsula 12.5 miles north of Suchland Islands and approximately 20 miles north northwest of Cranton Bay. The US-Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN) Board of Geographic Names (BGN) named the feature for Elizabeth City State University. Broader Participation: Demographics for these 109 students are as follows: women made up 42% to 63% and minorities made up 58% to 89%. The demographics of this group of REU students reflects the national need to engage underrepresented students in STEM disciplines and to encourage them in their pursuit of science-related careers. Students participating in the CReSIS-REU program represented a variety of minority-serving institutions (11) and non-MSIs (20). Many of these universities have limited research opportunities in STEM, but our REU students have gone on to conduct independent research in this field. For example, REU alumni Jerome Mitchell and Theresa Stumpf are both pursuing PhDs at CReSIS institutions, and they were also both honored with the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship in 2012, which was awarded to fewer than 17 per cent of all applicants. CReSIS faculty, staff and GRA mentors worked with students to define and develop their research projects, meeting with students to discuss issues, concerns and information related to research, as well as to review and provide feedback on research poster and oral presentations. The grant also supported follow-up activities with the students during the academic year. Academic Year follow up activities included support for student presentations at national and international conferences, such as the Black Engineer of the Year Conference, American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, and the Association of Computer/Information Sciences and Engineering Departments at Minority Institutions (ADMI) annual conference. REU participants also made contributions beyond science and engineering. During the 2013 NSF "Change the World" Science and Engineering Career Fair at Dulles Town Center, CReSIS students presented multiple interactive demos, including Ice, Ice, Baby! lessons, our Glacier Goo program, which utilizes "goo" to represent glacier movement, and online tutorials presenting knowledge of the Antarctic and Arctic. They also assisted with the CReSIS booth during the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington DC. Approximately 325,000 people attended the festival, which represents the largest celebration of STEM in the nation. The CReSIS REU program has achieved its goal of engaging underrepresented students in polar science while providing both research training and professional development opportunities. Successful implementation of the CReSIS REU project resulted in a follow-on Arctic and Antarctic Research Experience for Undergraduates (AaA-REU) project, which has a component supporting a research experience for teachers. In addition, a Glacier Exploration project (CReSIS –GEX) has been approved which will provide a field experience for students in Juneau, Alaska and Norway.
