HR: 1340h
AN: ED33B-1226    [Abstracts]
TI: Developing virtual REU cohorts: Reflections from the IRIS Undergraduate Internship Program
AU: * Hubenthal, M
EM: hubenth@iris.edu
AF: IRIS Consortium, 1200 New York Ave. NW, Washington, 20005,
AU: Taber, J
EM: taber@iris.edu
AF: IRIS Consortium, 1200 New York Ave. NW, Washington, 20005,
AU: Aster, R
EM: aster@ees.nmt.edu
AF: New Mexico Tech, Dept. of Earth and Environmental Science, Socorro, 87801,
AU: Frassetto, A
EM: andyf@geo.arizona.edu
AF: University of Arizona, Dept. of Geosciences, Tuscon, 85721,
AB: Beginning in 2006, the IRIS Education and Outreach program received funding from the National Science Foundation (EAR-0453427) to explore a novel approach to the traditional Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) model. This model blends the spirit of an REU program, which traditionally hosts participants in one location with successful prior IRIS experience hosting students at widely separated institutions to participate in summer research. A unique feature the IRIS Undergraduate Internship Program is that throughout the summer, interns form and sustain a virtual community, offering assistance, sharing ideas, asking questions, and relaying life experiences while conducting their research at diverse institutions. Key to IRIS’s REU model is a combination of: one-on-one mentoring by researchers at IRIS institutions across the US, developing a strong unity among interns through both face-to-face and on-line interactions, participation of an IRIS REU alumni mentor to provide both group and intern-specific guidance developing interns’ abilities to self-evaluate and work independently, through carefully designed web-based tools, and increasing interns’ awareness of the IRIS and broader Earth Science community; demonstrating the role they will play in this larger community. Virtual interaction is facilitated by 1) bringing students together for face-to-face contact, through a week long orientation held annually at the IRIS PASSCAL Instrument Center on the campus of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and 2) the community enabling web infrastructure at http://www.iris.edu/internship/. During the orientation students engage in classes in geophysics basics, career preparation, as well as training to communicate virtually. Our experiences and evaluations from the 2006 and 2007 field seasons have:shown the increasing demand for electronic advertising of REU programs, provided support for several assumptions of the model including the key role of both the orientation week and the alumni mentor, revealed the important role of blogs and discussion forums in the mentoring and self-reflection process, as well as additional technical enhancements to improve the virtual cohort, produced concrete examples of the model applied at its best, and helped the program identify challenges the model faces, e.g communicating during remote fieldwork and sustaining intern's attention and participation in the virtual community.
UR: http://www.iris.edu/internship
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 7299 General or miscellaneous
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting