Through participation in this Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site at the New York City College of Technology (affiliated with the City University of New York), each year a total of 10 carefully selected students will be paired with established University and government scientists and demonstrably contribute to real-world research projects in the Earth Sciences. This urban campus has a longstanding and close association with NOAA's Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center (NOAA-CREST), and is thus particularly well suited to outreach that will encourage and enhance involvement of underrepresented groups in the sciences. Students will be selected and assigned to a specific university faculty member and/or NOAA researcher as their chief mentor. Following an appropriate orientation and with the benefit of occasional workshops focusing on various aspects of the scientific research process, each student will work over a 15-week period on an established mentor-led research project. Additional guidance from graduate students already working in their chosen sub-disciplines will provide further near peer-level mentorship to encourage the students' scientific growth and success. Through hands-on participation in field data collection activities, scientific conferences and visits to nearby research centers, emphasis will be placed on connecting participating REU students with established scientists, including minority members of the research community, in a variety of settings. Students will formalize their work via both written reports and oral presentations, and select participants will be given the opportunity to share their results at appropriate symposia and conferences.
Intellectual Merit: Participants will contribute to increased knowledge and understanding in basic science as well as applied research topics. Activities will encompass a variety of sub-disciplines, but will in particular take advantage of collocation with NOAA-CREST to expose students to cutting-edge remote sensing techniques critical to accurate observation and increased understanding of the Earth system. This REU Site will contribute significantly toward NSF's established goal of creating an internationally competitive and appropriately engaged public and, over the long term, enhance the quality of the academic scientific workforce.
Broader Impacts: By virtue of entraining and supporting a rich variety of students drawn primarily from the highly diverse demographic of the New York City College of Technology, this program will desirably enhance both near-term educational and long-term career opportunities for members of groups that have historically been underrepresented in the sciences. It will also contribute to the further enrichment of graduate students and future educators, and serve as a model for other programs of this type.
NSF Award No. ATM - 0755686 Program Director: Dr. Reginald Blake, Physics Department, New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York Title: Research Experience for Undergraduates in Satellite and Ground-Based Remote Sensing at NOAA-CREST This project provided undergraduate students an opportunity to conduct full-time, collaborative satellite and ground-based remote sensing research with faculty mentors from within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coorporate Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center (NOAA-CREST) consortium. Each year from 2008 – 2010, ten STEM students from the City University of New York’s 23 campus wide institutions were engaged in cutting-edge satellite and ground-based remote sensing research of the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, and the lithosphere. For fifteen weeks (nine weeks in the Summer, three weeks in the Fall, and three weeks in the Spring) these students became part of a community of research scholars who actively engaged in state-of-the-art remote sensing applications. They participated in research group meetings, seminars, oral and poster presentations at local, regional, and national conferences, and some of the students sailed across the Atlantic Ocean conducting remote sensing research as part of the AEROSE project. Since the program's inception in 2008, twenty-nine undergraduate students have benefitted from the rich STEM research experiences it provided. Seventy percent of the twenty-nine students were from underrepresented minority groups, and twenty-six percent of the overall REU student population was comprised of females. Of the total female cohort, seventy-one percent were from underrepresented minority groups. One of the major objectives of this program is to provide for these students a corridor that leads to graduate degrees in STEM. So far eight of the eleven CREST REU scholars who earned their Bachelor's degree have gone on to graduate school as STEM majors, and the other three students have found gainful employment in STEM fields. Therefore, by providing opportunities for STEM research, by improving the academic performance, skills, and attitudes of the students, and by providing significant exposure to STEM, this REU program has contributed in meaningful ways to the diversity of our nation’s 21st century STEM workforce. This NSF REU project was steeped in both outreach and dissemination. In a joint effort, this project established a collaborative REU exchange program with the REU program in Nornan, Oklahoma. It has created relationships with Middle Schools and High Schools in the New York metro region, and it has built international research ties with the Dominican Republic. The program has extensive dissemination portols via its main website and via a Book of Papers that highlights the REU students' research. The intellectual merit of our proposed activities is that we will provide promising college undergraduates the opportunity to work with scientists and engineers and conduct research at one of our nation’s premier scientific center in the area of Satellite and Ground-Based Remote Sensing. Remote Sensing is a critically important, unique, and young area of science, and it is practically unknown to many if not most of the undergraduates that we serve at CUNY. The proposed activities combine year long (Summer, Winter, Fall, and Spring) research experiences with focused, multidimensional/layered mentoring, and a robust learning community that produce holistic and engaging stimuli for the scientific and academic growth and development of our student participants. The broader impacts of this activity are that the students participating in this program will become the future engineers and scientists of our nation. Even those students who choose other careers will greatly benefit both themselves and our society by having a deeper understanding of the importance of this science. Moreover, the proposed activities will allow the undergraduate researchers to hone their acquired skills and knowledge by being research mentors to K – 12 students in the New York City Public school system. The scientific and educational value of this proposal derives from two main sources: a focus on the transfer of learning from sciences and mathematics to technology, computer systems and engineering applications where fundamental principles learned in particular natural sciences and mathematics courses are applied to real-world problems. the scientific, mathematical, and engineering expertise of the NOAA-CREST researchers, all of whom are professionally active scholars.
