Travel Proposal: Providing IRIS undergraduate interns with a 2018 AGU Fall Meeting experience

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This travel proposal requests support for 16 students who will have completed their summer research to take part in this capstone experience at the 2018 Fall AGU in Washington, DC. The requested funds will support roundtrip travel to the meeting, lodging, food, and meeting registration and abstract fees for the students. These students were selected to take part in the IRIS REU program through a rigorous application process, from a pool of over 70 applicants who met the minimum criteria for the internship. The fundamental elements of the internship model include: a) an orientation where interns learn seismological basics and build the cohort through shared experiences, b) cyberinfrastructure to nourish group cohesion while enabling peer-learning and collaboration, c) a transition to independent research through a carefully structured research experience, d) expert faculty mentoring, e) presentation of research results, reconnecting face-to-face, and integration into the alumni network (this travel proposal), f) an Alumni Mentor to provide experienced, consistent support throughout the entire process, and g) a common scientific focus emphasizing the acquisition and analysis of seismic data to help address broader Earth science questions. Now in its twentieth year, the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) Undergraduate Internship Program has had a significant impact on students' career development and increasing diversity in the geosciences. This program has pioneered a distributed REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) model that bonds students into a cohort, and uses virtual interactions via the Internet and an alumni mentor to maintain cohesion despite students conducting research at geographically distributed sites. The capstone of the experience is to bring the students together again at the Fall American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting to meet intern alumni and other seismologists, and to present their research. Not only will this travel proposal develop seismological knowledge by supporting interns to disseminate their research, this unique REU model has the opportunity to contribute to the growing body of knowledge regarding the application of virtual interactions for distance learning, community building, and the implementation of the skills associated with metacognition (awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes). The success, documentation and dissemination of this model, will also enable other organizations to apply geographically distributed resources to the development of their human capital. Additionally, this proposal presents an opportunity to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in the study of seismology. IRIS continues to work closely with minority serving institutions and professional organizations to raise awareness of the study of seismology as a potential career path.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.