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Next: Faculty Expertise
Up: RESEARCH EXPERIENCES FOR
UNDERGRADUATES
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The future of our society will be shaped by the young and talented minds going
through our colleges and universities today. The goal of this REU site is to
encourage more of these students to pursue graduate studies, and to help them
realize their full potential in this regard. We believe that the best way to
achieve this goal is to involve the students as a part of a successful, active
research group. This exposes them to the intellectual excitement that is
involved in research activity, encourages them to think creatively and
independently, and helps them to develop the skills necessary to work on
research projects. In addition, students are exposed to professional meetings,
learn to assimilate the latest research from reading and discussing recent
papers, and learn how to write up and present the results of their own research.
It is obvious that an undergraduate research experience that lasts only a few
months does not allow sufficient time to complete a serious project. Hence, such
a short project would not allow participants the chance to achieve the feeling
that they have made a significant original contribution. Since this feeling of
accomplishment is the primary motivation of most researchers, we believe that
the REU experience must be structured so that each student has the maximum
opportunity to successfully complete their chosen project. Hence, as in previous
years, we plan a total REU experience spread out over (at least) one calendar
year, typically as a summer/fall/spring sequence.
From our previous experience, we have found that interaction among students
from different institutions greatly increases the diversity of ideas and the
quality of the experience. During the academic year, however, guidance and
supervision is difficult if the student and the faculty member are at
different institutions. Consequently, we feel that it is important to have a
faculty member at each institution directly involved with, and responsible
for, each student. The faculty member can then easily supervise the
student's academic year course load and be available for advice and
guidance. We feel that our management strategy for the program has been
demonstrated over the past seven years to be quite successful. The site will
be hosted administratively at the University of Central Florida (UCF). It
will involve Professors Mubarak Shah and Niels da Vitoria Lobo from UCF,
Professor Kevin Bowyer from the University of South Florida (USF), and
Professor Louise Stark from the University of the Pacific, as well as
student participants from these institutions.