Value, Impact and Best Practices: Maximizing REU SBE Potential

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The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) is hosting a 1.5 day conference in Washington, DC, devoted to Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) in the fields of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. The conference brings together veteran REU awardees and their students, new awardees, and faculty who aspire to win REU grants for their institutions or send their students to REU programs. Participants hear from plenary speakers on the research showing the value and impact of undergraduate research and best practices in undergraduate research programs. Breakout sessions address relevant topics, e.g. how to institutionalize, sustain, and evaluate undergraduate research programs, and scaffolding undergraduate research experiences from first through fourth year. At least one breakout session is designed specifically for student participants, e.g. leveraging undergraduate research experiences for future career success. Following the conference, CUR will publish conference proceedings with plenary addresses, PowerPoint presentations, and summaries of breakout sessions. These will be made available to the CUR network of university faculty and administrators.Intellectual merit. Long-standing REU programs have developed procedures for recruiting and supervising students, providing logistical support, supervising research, teaching research ethics, and disseminating research results. There is currently no mechanism for these experienced programs to share their best practices with existing programs or with new awardees; this conference provides that mechanism. The conference includes student participants in SBE REU programs to (a) share their experiences with principal investigators and NSF program officers and (b) experience an academic conference with other faculty and students in their broad disciplinary area within the SBE sciences.Broader impacts. REU programs are typically developed and managed by researchers who understand research in their own disciplines, but may not know of the scholarship of undergraduate research. This conference helps experienced REU principal investigators put their undergraduate research programs into a broader framework by sharing research on the impact of participating in research. It also helps new principal investigators consider and potentially adopt the appropriate best practices developed in veteran program to their own projects. It helps faculty whose institutions do not currently host an REU program to learn how their students can access REU programs at other institutions, and how they might win REU grants themselves. The conference also addresses issues of interest to all, e.g. institutionalizing REU programs, specific challenges faced by SBE REU sites, securing additional resources, and incorporating appropriate research opportunities into undergraduate curricula.