REU Site for 2-Year Undergraduates in Chemistry at Texas A&M University- Commerce

East Texas A&M University, Commerce TX

Investigators

Abstract

This award by the Chemistry Division supports a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site at Texas A&M University-Commerce for the summers of 2009-2011. The program director is Ben Jang who is assisted by co-PI Stephen Starnes. Ten students each year will be recruited from 2-year community colleges in the Northeast Texas area, with total enrollment of over 220,000 and more than 60,000 majors in chemistry, physics, pre-professional, and pre-engineering and non-science majors taking science courses. Ten selected student researchers, eight supported by NSF and two by Texas A&M U.-Commerce are required to go through basic training and project-based instrumentation training followed by working intensively with mentors on redesigned collaborative research projects. Experiences and momentum gained from the REU program in 2006-2008 will be used to expand the impact on student participants. A Special Topic course will be required for students to increase their level of preparation for productive research. At the end of the program, every student will participate in a poster session open to university community and their home colleges, to summarize their research accomplishments. The project is a novel way to reach community college students with a local setting for efficient follow-up. It is expected that the REU site will be a model to provide opportunities to 2-year college students in underserved regions of the nation for effective STEM recruitments.