REU Sites: Renewal for the Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University

众所周知，让本科生从事研究工作往往会促使他们做出攻读研究生学位的积极决定。像目前在TAMU CS的REU网站资助项目，在增加我们研究生项目中的女性和少数族裔人数方面非常有效。例如，从2004年和2005年REU的暑期项目来看，16名REU学生中有4名（或25%）参加了TAMU的研究生课程，其中2名是女性或少数族裔。提议更新REU网站的目标是：(1)让不同的本科生接触到令人兴奋的计算机科学研究，目标是让学生攻读研究生学位；(2)让不同的本科生接触到作为教师的职业。计算机科学领域在少数民族和女性研究生项目的数量上落后。这个项目直接使这些学生受益，因为它为妇女和少数民族提供了一个机会，特别是参与研究项目，接触到各种各样的榜样，并形成可以在项目之外存在的社区。每个REU学生将有一名指导教师和一名研究生导师。这些研究项目将集中在七个核心领域，这些领域反映了该系目前的专业知识：计算机基础；以人为中心的系统;信息;智能系统与机器人技术；软件;软件工程与系统。这些领域对新兴的多学科领域至关重要，如生物信息学、计算科学和人文信息学。学生将有机会深入核心领域或将核心领域应用于新兴的多学科领域。

It is well known that exposure of undergraduates to research often leads to a positive decision about pursuing graduate degrees. Program such as the current REU Site grant in CS at TAMU have been very effective with increasing our numbers of women and minorities in our graduate program. For example, from the 2004 and 2005 REU site summer programs, 4 of the 16 REU students (or 25%) are enrolled in graduate programs at TAMU, of which 2 are women or minority. The objectives of the proposed renewal REU site are: (1) exposure of diverse undergraduates to exciting research in Computer Science with the goal of having the students pursue a graduate degree and (2) exposure of diverse undergraduates to a career as a faculty member. The computer science field lags behind in numbers of ethnic minorities and women in the graduate program. This project directly benefits these students by having a program that provides an opportunity for women and minorities, in particular, to participate in the research projects, be exposed to various role models, and form communities that can exist beyond the program. Each REU student will have a faculty advisor and a graduate student mentor. The research projects will focus on seven core areas that reflect the current expertise in the department: Foundations of Computing; Human-Centered Systems; Information; Intelligent Systems and Robotics; Software; Software Engineering and Systems. These areas are critical to emerging multi-disciplinary areas, such as bioinformatics, computational science, and humanities informatics. Students will have an opportunity to work in depth in the core area or with the application of the core area to an emerging, multi-disciplinary area.