REU Site: Weather, Climate and Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach Integrating Physical and Social Sciences

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This Weather, Climate, and Society (WCS) REU program hosted by the University of South Florida (USF) is designed to prepare the next generation of undergraduates (UGs) to pursue STEM fields and become successful future graduate students and researchers. The REU will broaden participation of underrepresented groups by recruiting participants primarily from non-research institutions, including local Hispanic Serving Institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Focusing on rising sophomores, this REU program draws students into the STEM disciplines early in their career. Research projects will explore a range of issues from social and physical factors which affect hurricane evacuation decision making, to assessing the social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities of coastal regions to sea level rise, and developing strategies to adapt and mitigate sea level rise impacts. Each project will have the potential to directly benefit the west central Florida community, as well as disaster-vulnerable communities in other extreme weather¬ affected areas. USF's WCS REU will become a model for interdisciplinary-based research. The program, which draws from an interdisciplinary panel of mentors, is designed to achieve these objectives: 1) Deliver an intensive research experience for 10 undergraduates/year with an emphasis on under-represented groups; 2) Provide participants with research experiences to aid their recruitment into a STEM UG major, particularly the atmospheric sciences or a related discipline, and graduate programs; 3) Promote participants' skill development through a program of mentored research, experiential learning, professional development workshops, remote seminars that offer interaction with national and international scientists, trainings in social and physical research techniques and interdisciplinary perspectives on social and physical aspects, and impacts of, severe weather and climate and related disasters; 4) Increase awareness of ethical issues related to working with scientific data and communicating the results; and 5) Provide UGs access to a mentoring network that will support them throughout their career. Students will receive exposure to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, and tools such as geographic information systems (GIS), and use their acquired skills on mentored research projects. The NSF REU UGs will work in a team with other students, being co-mentored by faculty in both the physical and social science disciplines. Students will participate in a project from conception to presentation and dissemination of results. UGs will therefore be involved in all aspects of research, including field work, sample processing in the laboratory and data analysis, and manuscript preparation.