The Cleveland Clinic Foundation William A. Smith
This program will recruit advanced undergraduate engineering students from colleges and universities across the United States, to provide the students with realistic, hands-on research experiences. One group of eight students per year will be recruited for nominally six month employment terms at the CCF. Each will select an individual faculty mentor at the CCF, in addition to the PI. They will also have a home school faculty sponsor. Hiring will be staggered, so that students will have a three-month term as a junior engineer, and a term as a senior engineer. Upon completion, the students will return to the homes school, and in collaboration with the faculty sponsor, recruit two students to complete a two- quarter senior project growing from the CCF experience. Consequently, the participant will consistently advance in independence and responsibility through three stages, culminating as a project leader. The CCF will loan hardware, instrumentation, software, and computer access as necessary, to conduct the home research. The stimulation of the research activity will extend into the home colleges engineering environment. A total of 114 students will be supported, over the proposed five year program. Interactions will be among the CCF-based students, with the CCF staff, postdoctoral and graduate students, with the home faculty, and with home students in and out of the program. An ethics training component is included. An aggressive recruiting program will increase the participation of under-represented groups in the program. Similarly, emphasis will be placed on recruiting from "teaching" rather than "research" oriented institutions. Educational assessment and feedback is also a significant component. Because of this effort, the CCF will have technology to quantitatively improve and extend its work, and the students will have been exposed to research in a world class facility. The participants in the program will model research activity to other members of the student body at the home school.
