REU Site: A Summer Experience for Undergraduates Integrating Research, Education, and Career Development in an Interdisciplinary Environment

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This award from the Division of Chemistry (CHE) at the National Science Foundation supports a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site led by Professors David R. Benson and Joseph A. Heppert at the University of Kansas (KU). The research projects supported at this Site entitled "A Summer Experience for Undergraduates Integrating Research, Education, and Career Development in an Interdisciplinary Environment", is dedicated to providing for the students a stimulating interdisciplinary environment with a multifaceted career enhancement program that encourages and prepares the participants for graduate studies and careers in the chemical sciences. Key components of the program include ethics and safety training, panel discussions highlighting the variety of career options available to chemists (including entrepreneurship), a short course on green chemistry, and site visits to companies and institutions in the greater Kansas City Area that are engaged in interdisciplinary science. The participants will benefit from the highly collaborative environment provided by the large KU chemical community, close interactions with faculty and graduate student (or postdoctoral) mentors, state-of-the-art facilities, and opportunities to communicate and disseminate their accomplishments in written and oral forms. Additionally, the NSF funding that is requested to support 10 participants per year will be given to students who have limited opportunities for research at their home institutions. This includes students at primarily undergraduate institutions, as well as students at other schools who cannot partake of available research opportunities for personal economic reasons. Additional participants will be supported by individual faculty research grants. The goals are for at least 50% of the NSF-funded participants to be women, and for 20-30% to come from traditionally underrepresented groups in the sciences. This REU Site program has provided summer research experiences for more than 450 undergraduates from across the country over the past 25 years, thereby effectively serving as a regional hub for undergraduate research.