The Biology Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Leadership Council (LC) will lead this project to develop, test and implement an on-line common tracking tool for use by the Biology REU Principal Investigator (PI) community. Data collected from REU program alumni will document the long-term impact of the REU experience on students? future career decisions and provide assessment data to Principal Investigators to use in modifying and updating their programs. In addition, it will allow the Biology REU LC to document program-wide outcomes, including information about the program elements that contribute to success for diverse populations of students, thereby supporting broadening participation in the REU programs. The objectives of this proposal are to: 1) provide Bio REU Principal Investigators with a web-based tool that allows them to efficiently and effectively track their program alumni, 2) work with the Bio REU Principal Investigators to define a set of criteria to create REU program profiles that can be used in the analysis of program-wide assessment and tracking data, and 3) collect and aggregate data from across Bio REU sites using the common tracking tool to assess long-term outcomes of the program as a whole. For more information about this project contact the project directors, Dr. Janet Branchaw (branchaw@wisc.edu) and Dr. Julio Soto (julio.soto@sjsu.edu).
The main objectives of the project were to: 1) Provide Bio REU program directors with a web-based tool that allows them to efficiently and effectively track their program alumni; 2) Work with the Bio REU program directors to define a set of criteria to create REU program profiles that can be used in the analysis of program-wide assessment and tracking data; and 3) Collect and aggregate student outcome data from across Bio REU sites using the common tracking tool to assess outcomes of the program as a whole. Development of these tools would allow the Bio REU community to track program-wide progress in recruiting and training a diverse group of students for careers in scientific research. At a Program Directors meeting the Bio REU PI community identified the parameters they would like to use in the program profile. However, the assessment database to which a tracking tool using these program profile parameters would be linked required reprogramming. The work to complete reprogramming took longer and cost more to complete than expected, so the tracking database has not been not developed. However, the reprogramming of the assessment database is now complete, so development and implementation of the tracking tool will proceed.
