Hello everyone,

We had a good REU/summer program visioning meeting a few weeks back and wanted to follow up on the topics specific to the summer field season at the site. The full meeting notes can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19yptev8epj0sTyrUsQBMib6quoGI1Rr7UF5bk5UxGLs/edit).

REU students

If you are interested in working with an REU student, we would like to schedule a follow-up meeting to assess our capacity so we can move quickly to recruitment.  We would like to use these REU positions to broaden participation at the site (as REUs are intended to do), and we also need to make sure these students are well-supported during a roughly 10-week residency. Both tasks will take some creative thinking on our parts.  Please contact Geoff if you want to bounce ideas around.

Please contact us (Linda and Geoff) with your ideas for student research experiences, including a vision of their day-to-day for the summer. If that vision is incomplete, CONTACT US ANYWAY.  This is a great opportunity to figure out what we can do. Please have these ideas to us by January 7.

If you plan to be involved, please fill out this Doodle poll so we can meet to assess where we stand. We might have 4 perfect situations.  Or 2.  Or 5.  Most likely our capacity will increase if we talk together.

https://doodle.com/poll/ddnqb6vkru2hq6fn?utm_source=poll&utm_medium=link

Please fill out the Doodle Poll by December 22.

Field season visioning

We would like to aim our efforts at providing student programming, training, and general stimulation for the summer residents as a whole (allowing for possibly targeting graduate students separately on occasion).  We would like to continue envisioning what this could look like.  I’m sure we’ll keep Science Nights (now with pizza!), and, COVID permitting, we’ll revive the student symposium.  What else?  Trainings?  Field trips?  Public engagement?  What can we do that conveys to the students our enthusiasm and values?  We hope this will involve more of us than just the REU mentor teams, so please stay tuned and give some thought to how you might like to contribute.

Sincerely,

Geoff and Linda