This award provides funds to the sociology department at University of Missouri-Kansas City for an REU Site which offers students a research experience in sociology during the summer. Students will be drawn primarily from junior colleges, regional colleges that attract large numbers of minority students from the Kansas City area, and from several small undergraduate colleges in the region that have limited research opportunities for their students. The program will provide research opportunities for nine students for ten weeks during the summer of 1993. The program has two educational components: (1) The structured component consists of daily instructional sessions, weekly colloquia, keeping a research journal (log), and one outside invited researcher colloquia; (2) The individualized component consists of four research groups composed of 2-3 students and one faculty member working on a common research project. The emphasis of the research is on problem selection, approaches to literature review, uses of secondary data sources, when appropriate, to address research problems, processing and analyzing secondary data, collecting primary data when appropriate, and organizing and writing up findings into publishable/presentation form. Additional emphases within the program include teaching team work, learning joint problem solving, utilizing time given competing ends, and working within budgetary constraints. Students will work alongside research faculty during the summer period and learn first-hand the ways in which the research enterprise is conducted. This award contributes to the Foundation's continuing efforts to attract talented students into careers in science through active undergraduate research experiences.
