 Nope. Very good. All right. Well, so Dr. Michael Pullin is a chemistry professor at New Mexico Tech And he's in the director of STEM app and he's also a member of the uranium team In the EPSCOR project this go around so Mike go go for it Okay, hello I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the STEM program. That's part of the education and outreach effort for the EPSCOR proposal So what is STEM math? It's the STEM advancement program Not such a great name. We might change it when we Announce it to students, but in any case it's an education and outreach program to involve undergraduate STEM majors from non-research schools in EPSCOR funded research And the program pays most of the cost of that experience and I'll talk more about that in a moment The overall goals though are to increase the likelihood of students completing their STEM degrees To get the four to two-year college students to transfer to four-year programs And to get the four-year college students to make the jump to graduate school Nationwide students in STEM degrees are less likely to complete their degrees than other college degrees They often switch to a non-stem degree partway through their time in college There's a low rate of two-year college students transferring to four-year programs and a low rate of students transferring from four-year to graduate school and That that rate is markedly lower for students in underrepresented populations in both cases You can see in the state that undergraduate enrollment pretty closely mirrors the Distributions of various ethnic categories racial categories at the undergraduate level But at the graduate level, it's it's dramatically different So that's what we're hoping to make some impact on So the program is a 10-week summer research program. It starts on a gene second and ends on August 8th The first week we have workshops EPSCOR themes in this case energized in Mexico and Professional development topics and that's that's held at New Mexico Tech So we have all the students at Tech for a week and then after that we place them for the next nine weeks In EPSCOR funded laboratories around the state and they conduct full-time research with the team one of those places We pay the students directly We pay them a $4,000 stipend for the summer and we usually meter that out like a paycheck every couple weeks we Find a range and pay for dorm housing We pay we give them a check for food and living expenses We enroll them at students at New Mexico Tech and there are a number of reasons to do that But we give them three credits of independent study credit there and You know one reason is to make sure you're covered by Somebody's insurance somewhere And also making them students just just makes it much easier to pay them into And to look after them having a possibility of giving them a letter grade also is a good thing This year this in this round where we set aside $500 Towards conference travel in the year following the program for each of the participants and we'll help them Locate a conference and locate additional funding The things that would need to be paid by the researcher hosting the student would be any research related travel So if there's field work That needs to come out of the DPI's budget and then also the materials and supplies for the research projects DPI's budget and you know, we're really hoping that these students get involved in projects that are already ongoing So I don't think that's too unreasonable I hope we Recruit the students to apply to the program We make campus visits. We send out mailings and there will be a website We ask them for their transcripts some reference letters And ask them to write an essay or two about why they want to be in the program and what they hope to get out of it They also in the application rank the available projects by their interest And so we know which projects are most interested in the applications will likely be due march first and Once we get all of the applications in We put them all together and organize them and we send applications from students Who are qualified for your project and and rank your project highly So we send you those applications and then we ask you to rank those those applicants in order of your preference and then we get all that information back from various projects and PIs and Because more than one researcher may rank the same students highly we have to make some decisions about Where the students will go and who to be working with and so we'll make the final decision on the acceptance and placement We then notify the students and give them a deadline to respond usually a couple weeks And occasionally we have students who say no if they've got a different job or there's several plans have changed And so we just moved on the list and you know that they were ranked Trying to fill in the spots We make all the arrangements for housing and payment and enrollment and all of that So the research folks don't have to deal with that at all And they they'll simply arrive at your door on Monday June 9th ready to do work A few details One important point about this is we we place the students in pairs at the same location So we have two students working on the same project or at least closely related projects Maybe slightly different aspects of the same project, but not a completely different projects And we learned long ago When we were running REU programs attacked that putting students in pairs Increases their success and satisfaction in the program When we asked them What was the most important aspect of the program? Influencing your success Work having a research partner undergraduate research partner Ranked just below, you know meeting with faculty and reading research papers So we feel it's an important part of the program important part of the design It really gets the students a partner to help with you know confidence issues and problem solving And uh, you know this this is often the first research experience for these students It's the first time they've worked out Some at a research university and so this is very intimidating for them and uh I'm a very anxious but so I think just having another person to point to the same process with them is Um really beneficial So we really ask that you don't split up to students and give them to different people or different projects Now at the end, uh, we have a final, uh conference to wrap up the program We ask all of the students to give a 30 minute, uh oral talk Um on their work and their results That'll be on friday august 8th We pull we bring everybody to the same location In the past we've done it at the mexico tech. We've also done it in jama springs and aluito Um, and we'll figure out a location, uh, well before the summer starts this year The students may need to drive there the day before because they're scattered all over the state And so we'll have housing available for that The thursday night before him So what do we expect from the research folks? Well, each project really should host a pair of students each summer And because of the start date, this will be running for four summers 2014 15 16 17 Now it could be a different p.i. Or campus each year. So Uh, you know, dr. Hayden's project could host students at tech one year like you and him another year State another year However, you know, you want to do it Probably depends on where most of the research is happening. That's the time We ask that you supervise them in a research project, obviously And we'd like this to be more than just, you know, technician work We don't want the washing dishes or just washing dishes or just Doing the same thing over and over again We'd like it to be a small project related to ongoing work And and to have it be hypothesis-driven research to help them develop the research questions, but give them a The opportunity to help form the questions not just Do what you tell them to do And you could provide them with some background reading in advance the students will often, you know If you send them papers a few weeks before the program starts to regret them The most important thing to making this work is to make sure they have a day to day supervisor That works well with undergraduates The few problems they have have been when they just don't have a day to day supervisor And they're kind of left to their own devices or they're assigned, let's say a graduate student Just doesn't know how to work with undergraduates. It doesn't have much experience in it And that often doesn't go very well at all We'd like you to help them prepare for their final conference They usually never give in a talk like this before at least for a big audience like this And so it's very intimidating and often you just don't even know how to approach it So help them with the data analysis and interpretation, obviously But also help them, you know, formulate and practice the talk We'd also like you to attend the final conference in August 8th The students are just very disappointed when their research mentors and people in the lab They work with them not there to see the final talk. It's a big deal for them To give this and they've given you their entire summer So it would be just great if we could have a good audience There while you're there will also ask you to fill out an evaluation of your student But also the other students as well And we'll use that in our assessment program to see whether or not we thought this particular year was successful We'll ask you to participate in other assessment activities related to the project So the assessment person for the statewide project They contact you with some questions and it shouldn't take up a lot of your time What we do ask you to respond Now you can also give a workshop during the first week of the program And I'll tell you more about that So what do we do for you? Well, we handle all the recruiting and application management We enroll them and deal with all of the red tape Associated with paying them We book in and pay for housing. We plan to arrange the final conference We help the students with the conference travel and funding and we do all the assessment Really we want the researchers just to focus on being good research mentors We try to make everything else as easy as possible We can also help with problematic students or problematic situations It's rare that this comes up. You know, you the student just doesn't want to do the work Or has some other issue It happens once in a while. Maybe once every two years. We have some kind of issue with one student And we can you know be a third party to sort of Uh Try to step in and resolve things and we can hold back their pay if they're not working Or you know remind them that they're going to be graded at the end of the semester As a follow-up to the summer program, we also have an academic year program. This is new for this round of export The students will receive a stipend for their academic work in the following year So that to get this they'll have to develop an individualized plan with a mentor at their home campus You know such as setting academic goals Things like that report on their plan progress periodically attend escort meetings and events and we're still developing this and Certainly before we get into the summer program will have This thing better More will develop What do we need from you right now? What we really need are summer research project descriptions We asked the students to rank the projects according to their interest And so we need to have the projects to advertise and for the students to read about on our website And then we go out and recruit on campus So we need a catchy title something that is not too jargonny or or academic Um, we need to know where the students will be locations Now you can change the location Midstream during the summer you can have students start at one university Halfway through switched to another school. We can we can set the housing to make that happen if needed We did that a few times in the last round and it it actually worked pretty well Edward Martinez and I collaborated one summer and the students spent Four or five weeks with him doing field work collecting samples and then they brought them down to tech and work with me on the analysis Uh, it worked out really great. I wouldn't have them bouncing around You know too many times during the summer. They do have to pack up everything they want to move And uh, you know that it's up time and it's disruptive. So once during the summer is fine, I think though We need to know who the project supervisors would be for this summer And then we need a written project description and it should be aimed at mid-level undergraduate extended Two to three paragraphs and if you have an image or a figure to go along with it that looks great Okay, that was muted. I'm unmuted You should end the project description with a list of activities the students will do so, you know, just physically describe what will the students do synthesizing molecule Test its structure using nmr etc etc Just so the students have a Better picture of what they will actually be doing beyond You know the academic topic for the study A list of majors that should be willing to host if you really only want, you know chemistry majors You should say that so that we can only give you applications from chemistry majors We can also focus on recruiting chemistry majors so that we have Some students that are appropriate for the project And also a list of classes that you think might be required for students So for example, if you want them to do organic synthesis You might say that you want them to have taken organic chemistry one or organic chemistry one and two We need to know that too so we can find those students and also give you the right applications But we do encourage you to be as broad as possible the more restrictive you are the few the fewer students you'll have to choose from So be as broad as you can While still being able to give the student meaningful summer We definitely don't want students to be in projects that they're not well prepared for asking a student to do organic synthesis They've only taken general chemistry is probably not a good idea. We're not going to have a great summer If you could get back to us by the end of the week that would be wonderful Maybe the beginning of next week, but we need to get the web page up and start recruiting so as soon as you can Really, this is you know a one-page write-up. It shouldn't be too cumbersome We also need presenters and ideas for the week one workshops. So these will be The first week of June at New Mexico Tech It could be a research topic related. So if you want to talk about solar energy or Radium in the four corners area or whatever that would be great You want to try to make these things interesting and fun? You know you can lecture at them for a while But you know lecturing at them for half a day Really just gets tedious and boring It is summer and so they are they do want to do something more active And so we could have a two-hour time slot. So half a morning or half an afternoon Four hours, which is more typical, you know all morning all afternoon or even an all day event For example, san fernald from mexico state with how they Isekia hydrology workshop This past summer So they started out in the morning. They went out Really they started with an hour of discussion of hydrology in isekias And then they went out into the field for the rest of the morning took measurements collected samples And then they came back in the afternoon and analyzed the data and worked it up and discussed it and that worked out great Now the projects can involve field work or a field trip and we can arrange the transportation with vans and drivers Whatever it is you need for the for the workshop The other thing we talk about besides the research areas are what we call professional development topics For example, I often give a Talk about Transferring to four-year colleges what those degree programs entitle on how to transfer Or the issues surrounding that and also graduate schools. How do you find a graduate school? How do you pay for it? et cetera We usually give a workshop on searching the scientific literature online databases, which is great We've given workshops on preparing a poster or a talk Um, we even gave one on gps and map the last round. We had a lot of people do a lot of field work and see that as pretty helpful And if people have suggestions for professional development activities or or something they really want to talk about that that's great too Now we can give uh people who do the workshops a small stipend and pay their travel expenses to firm tech So that should help I think And you can send this information to me at an expert tech artistina at uh, fscore and look at the information put together And let you know if we have any questions So that's all I have Do folks have questions about the program or what we need? Michael how many students do you think you'll be able to support this year? We should be able to support 12 so six projects times two students They need to project And what level are they do are they like finishing their sophomore year finishing their freshman year? Um, we don't we don't require that they'd be at any point in their academic career Um, we've had students who are finishing their first year of college take part and do well um, we've had you know students from four-year colleges Between their junior and senior year and they've done pretty well on everything in between Well, it really depends mostly on your project and what you need for your project if you really need You know somebody who's you know more of a college junior And that's what we'll find and get for you But uh, you know, there are a lot of small to your colleges around the state and so we do recruit from them and um I was initially worried about this that you know, these students just wouldn't be ready But uh, it was quite the contra and we found that the students actually did very well As long as we were careful to make sure they had enough coursework Done so that they could have a meaningful experience But we were careful about that and the students did very well and the faculty reported back that they were Pleasantly surprised with the to your college students. So Really it depends more on your project than anything Any other questions? Mike, this is Mary Jo. So you need the researchers to send you their one page description as soon as possible, correct? Yes So This is what we need Like I said by the time you write this all up, it's usually a word file. It's about a page in one. It's not too too onerous of A topic Assignment Just sit down. We can crank it out in an hour or something I think the other thing you need to do is talk with other people in your project and find out who wants to do this this summer Think about how this would work. Uh, what what kind of work will be going on this summer? and Where would it be best for them to be placed? You know, it would be the best person to supervise That would take a little longer to think Just just talking with each other Are there um specific characteristics in terms of supervisors like what to look for to know that you've got one who's going to work well with these students? um you know In terms of grad students, it's you know, the students who are good TA's The students who've supervised on the graduates before um I don't want to you know stereotype anybody but the international students I think are a little less at least at first well-suited to this They come from a very different academic system often And so working with americans undergraduates is Not something they're automatically very good at although um I've seen it work. I've seen that work as well I think also, you know a grad student who is further along in their career is better Somebody who's you know me deep in the research you could use and helpers Those are often the most motivated, you know grad students Um grad students who want to go on an academic career They're going to have to supervise students the rest of their lives in that case and so They should take a you know real active interest in doing something like this um But you know, it could be a lab technician. It could be a senior undergraduate who's been working with you for a while I've seen that work well I think it's more of a personality issue than anything motivation You don't want to assign these students to to a grad student who really has no other involvement in the project You know, then they're often not very interested In the research mentors Mike Katie asks Can you send the requirements for the research project description via email? Yes, we can certainly do that I guess we'll follow up the email about the webinar with Maybe a one page description of what we need We can do that for sure Steve you'll just follow up on that. Can you send the presentation out also? Not just the Yeah, I think we know it's going to put that up on the epscore website. So we'll send out a link For sure, and I think that there'll also be a recording of this And they're going to put it on the eps New mexico epscore youtube page So we'll send you the link for that as well Last call for questions All right, I think that'll take care for today. Thank you all for for being part of our webinar and we'll follow up with those links via email Yes, thank you. Thank you Okay, thanks