REU Site: Social and Environmental Influences on Brain and Behavior

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This project is funded from the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Sites program in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE). The goal of this REU Site is to create an undergraduate research fellowship program. One of the two major aims of this program is to improve the diversity of our scientists. To improve the education, training, and subsequent representation of diverse populations in psychology, we will provide students from underrepresented backgrounds with rigorous research training so that they are better prepared to pursue a future career in STEM. Our second major aim is to improve the diversity of our science. Unfortunately, in most published research, variation based on context, socio-economic status and race, for example, is difficult to study, as our samples are not representative of the general US population. Instead of controlling for variability based on socio-emotional context, in this proposal, we seek to study it directly in an attempt to find systematic relations between this variability and basic neural, cognitive, and social processes. Overall, it is our hope that this training program will not only create a more diverse next generation of scientists, but that it will also train current and future generations of researchers who are highly motivated and well-equipped to produce more diverse science.The 1-year fellowship program will have three main components—a) rigorous hands-on research training, b) professional development, and c) community engagement. To gain hands-on research training, fellows will receive a stipend to work full-time in a Rutgers-Newark lab in the Psychology Department for the duration of the summer. To foster career professional development and enhance their research skills, fellows will also take part in a weekly, one-hour research seminar during the academic year. Finally, they will receive training in community engagement so that they can learn how to recruit a diverse and representative sample of human subjects for their own research, and how to disseminate their findings directly to those community members.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.