This three-year REU Site program at the University of Colorado, Boulder is focused in the broad area of environmental engineering. Over the ten-week summer program, nine or ten undergraduate students per year will conduct research on a broad range of topics in environmental engineering emphasizing multimedia approaches (water, air, soil) and long-term drivers of environmental systems such as energy, climate variability and hydrology. An interesting feature of this program is that, three or four of the students per summer will work for five weeks on research projects with affiliated programs in Puerto Rico.
Cohort activities will include a seminar series and field trips highlighting research careers. The REU program will introduce the participants to career options in research by organizing tours of local research laboratories, including the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). A variety of social activities are also planned to build a sense of community and develop professional networking skills among the REU students and their mentors. During the final week students will prepare a written report of their project and make an oral presentation summarizing their findings at the final research symposium. The students in Puerto Rico will participate in the final research symposium via video conferencing (WebEx).
Recruitment efforts will be targeted to groups historically underrepresented in engineering and at universities will less research focus. The PI will target recruiting at a network of minority-serving institutions that will be coordinated with existing programs at the Boulder campus: The Summer Multicultural Access to Research and Training (SMART) program and the Multicultural Engineering Program (MEP). The students will be encouraged to present the results of their research at a professional conference such as the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting and other conferences.
, University of Colorado Boulder, PI: Angela Bielefeldt The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site in Environmental Engineering provided thirty undergraduate students with the opportunity to conduct mentored research via laboratory, field, and/or modeling projects that spanned topics on the quality and treatment of water, soil, or air. The research was mentored by faculty and graduate students in the Department of Civil, Environmental, & Architectural Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). The REU interns spent 10 weeks in the summer of 2010, 2011, or 2012 at CU conducting their research projects, which included writing a research proposal, making a final oral presentation of their research, and writing a final report. The interns lived in the dormitories on campus and also participated in lectures, seminars, and tours of local laboratories to increase their knowledge of environmental engineering, research abilities, and knowledge of research-related careers. Surveys at the beginning and end of the 10-week program asked interns to self-rate their level of knowledge of different topics on a 0 to 4 Likert scale. Statistically significant increases were found in level of knowledge of: experimental design; research and graduate school funding; research methods and data quality assurance/ quality control; responsible conduct of research; contemporary environmental engineering issues; environmental policy; environmental justice; air pollution; field sampling; and numerical simulation. Many of these were topics of the research seminars that students were required to attend. Others were specific to individual research projects, but part of the cohort experience as faculty introduced all of the research topics at the beginning of the program and students shared their findings at the end of the program. Increased confidence was also a self-reported outcome for many of the interns. Intellectual Merit: The REU interns’ individualized research projects contributed to ongoing projects of the CU faculty. Some of this work was integrated into peer-reviewed research publications, presented at conferences by the interns themselves or other members of the research team, and/or used to support new proposals. Publication venues included the highly ranked journal Environmental Science and Technology (McKay et al. 2011; volume 45, issue 16). Interns presented their research at conferences such as the American Geophysical Union, the Water Quality Technology Conference & Exposition, and SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science). Broader Impacts: The REU site benefitted a diversity of students. The interns were 77% female, 35% under-represented minorities (primarily Hispanic Americans), 36% from non-PhD granting institutions, and 81% from schools outside CU. The majority of the student participants were majoring in environmental and/or civil engineering, with a number of students from other engineering majors (primarily chemical, but also mechanical and biological) and sciences (chemistry, physics, environmental science, biology, geology). The interns also ranged from individuals who had just completed their first year of college (1 student) through seniors (had completed four years of college but were taking 4.5 to 5 years to graduate with their bachelor’s degree). Based on end-of-summer assessments and follow-up contact, students' long-term research interests were generally enhanced or reinforced through the REU experience.
