The Summer Program in Applied Psychology provides student participants with research training in human factors, health, and industrial/organizational psychology. The program objectives are to increase talented students' interest, understanding, and commitment to research, science, and scientific careers. These objectives should increase and sustain student participation in research, professional activities, and entry into graduate programs. As part of this REU Site, students present the results of their research at the Conference on Applied Psychology, which includes presentations from invited speakers. Follow-through annual activities include travel support for additional professional presentations, collaborative publications, and advising to support applications to graduate programs.
Intellectual Merit.
The students recruited for this REU Site have strong backgrounds in mathematics, biological science, social science, and/or industrial engineering, exhibit potential interest and commitment to science and research, and are selected mainly from non-research colleges and universities. The main intellectual merit of this program is to identify and evaluate techniques that 1) increase student understanding of science and science careers, 2) increase student participation in professional activities, and 3) encourage student application to graduate programs in science. Program activities include a supervised program of collaborative research with eleven participating faculty from the Psychology and Industrial Engineering Departments. Support activities include course work in research methods in applied psychology, seminars, site-visits, and the Conference in Applied Psychology. Research partners in industry, government, and education collaborate via participation in support activities and research projects.
Broader Impacts
The broader impact of the program is to promote undergraduate research at the institutional level through the visible success of the program, to provide a model of effective undergraduate science education through professional national dissemination of the program characteristics and outcomes, to promote participation by underrepresented groups, and to extend the benefits of the program to the public and private sector through partnerships with defense, industry, and government entities.
The Summer Program in Applied Psychology provided student participants with research training in human factors, health, human centered computing, and industrial/organizational psychology. Our program objectives increased talented students’ interest, understanding, and commitment to research, science, and scientific careers. The intended impact increased and sustained student participation in research, professional activities, and entry into graduate programs. The students selected had strong backgrounds in mathematics, biological science, social science, and/or industrial engineering, exhibited potential interest and commitment to science and research, and were selected mainly from non-research colleges and universities. Program activities included a supervised program of collaborative research with eleven participating faculty from the Psychology, Human-Centered Computing, and Industrial Engineering Departments. Support activities included instruction in research methods in applied psychology, seminars, site-visits, and the Conference in Applied Psychology. Research partners in industry, government, and education collaborated via participation in support activities and research projects. Students presented the results of their research at the Conference on Applied Psychology, which included presentations from invited speakers. Follow-through annual activities included travel support for additional professional presentations, collaborative publications, and advising to support applications to graduate programs. The intellectual merit of the program is that it identified and evaluated techniques that 1) inspired students and increased their understanding of science and scientific careers, 2) increased student participation in professional activities, and 3) encouraged student application to graduate programs in science. The broader impact of the program is that it promoted undergraduate research at the institutional level through the visible success of the program, provided a model of effective undergraduate science education through professional national dissemination of the program characteristics and outcomes, promoted participation by underrepresented groups, and extended the benefits of the program to the public and private sector through partnerships with defense, industry, and government entities.
