REU Site: Intensive Mentored Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) in Psychology and Neuroscience at an Urban Public College

This project is funded from the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Sites program in the SBE Directorate. It has both scientific and societal benefits in addition to integrating research and education. The CUNY Boston College (BC) REU program aims to advance discovery for the scientific and broader communities while promoting mentoring, learning, and professional development by: (1) immersing students from underrepresented groups (primarily women, racial minorities, first-generation college students) in innovative research in psychology and neuroscience; (2) guiding students through the scientific process, from generation of research questions to communication of results; (3) engaging students in didactics that highlight the relevance and applied value of their laboratory work; (4) enhancing students' competitiveness for graduate school and professional positions; (5) training mentors to meet students’ training needs; and (6) boosting the research competence of local middle and high school teachers with downstream positive learning effects for their students.

This REU program also enables faculty members to supervise talented individuals who might otherwise miss out on mentored laboratory and professional development opportunities, and contributes to the training and advancement of the next generation of scientists.

The central (scientific) component of the BC REU program is a semester-long laboratory immersion, under the supervision of Psychology and Biology Department faculty mentors, which results in a completed research project. We emphasize the generation of high quality research and integration of psychological and neuroscientific theory with the design, execution, and interpretation of data.

We select ten students annually for mentored research projects, especially undergraduates from ethnic-minority serving, public two-year and four-year institutions in the New York metropolitan area. Students also attend weekly didactics: a seminar that focuses on research methods, data analysis, statistical reasoning, and professional issues/career development and a journal club that familiarizes students with scientific literature.

To enable students to address ethical issues that arise in research environments, we train students in key ethical guidelines and regulations based on the work of ethics experts. As a capstone experience, students present a first-authored poster at the BC Science Research Day, where they compete for awards based on the quality of their work and ability to communicate their findings.

Many of our students work with their mentors to publish their results in peer-reviewed journals. We also host a data-driven mentor training presentation and student-mentor discussion panel in order to facilitate strong mentor-mentee relationships, increase mentor-mentee dialogue, and further motivate REU students to pursue STEM careers. Finally, our program has a RET (Research Experiences for Teachers) component, which provides middle and high school teachers with coursework and mentored laboratory experiences to enhance their research proficiency and raise the level of science education in local middle schools and high schools.

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.