Research Experience for Undergraduates-2004

A Communications Workshop was held June 23-24, 2004 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Janine Solberg and Jody Shipka, graduate students with the Center for Writing Studies, conducted the workshop. The workshop stressed written and oral presentation skills. The students will use this knowledge for preparing their final written reports and delivering a Power Point presentation at the REU Symposium August 5-8 at Kiawah Island Resort, Charleston, SC.

Undergraduate Research Assistants (URA) Ashleigh Komnick (Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville) and Washington University REU student Meagan Mauter, joined REU students Mary Grondin (Michigan State University), Raymond Foltz (The Citadel), Lindsey Oliver (University of Chicago), Ty Stokes (University of South Carolina), Theodore Deligiannidis (University of South Carolina), and Timothy Brownawell (University of Illinois) for the workshop. The genre of the research report was discussed with emphasis on the introduction and the importance of citing what might be taken as “shared knowledge”. Students received a technical communication textbook, packet of sample reports, and handouts. A web page was established to supplement the print materials. The web site points to a variety of online support materials that they can use as references as they continue to develop their papers and presentations. A one-on-one consultation was held with each student to talk about their research report. Group discussions about effective Power Point presentations were held with a short presentation being videotaped. Students may elect to receive further support from the communication facilitators by posting their papers/queries on the Interactive Papers website.

The tri-center Earthquake Engineering Symposium for Young Researchers was the final activity for the ten-week summer NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. The symposium was held at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, Charleston, SC on August 5-8, 2004 and supplied a forum for the REU students to introduce the results of their research. MCEER was the host for this year’s symposium.

Six REU interns from the MAE Center and one from Washington University joined four students from MCEER, seven from PEER, and two from FAMU-FSU to give their presentations. Each student provided an abstract of his or her paper. Joseph R. Herkert, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at North Carolina State University offered the ethics component of the REU experience, “Engineering Ethics – What It Is and Why It Matters” with concurrent breakout sessions to discuss ethical dilemma problems. Makola M. Abdullah, Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the MCEER diversity program director was the keynote speaker. He talked about the importance of diversity programs.

Symposium participants toured the Cooper River Bridge, scheduled to be open for traffic in the summer of 2005. Charles T. Dwyer, Project Manager directed the site visit and discussed with the students South Carolina Department of Transportation’s building of North America’s longest cable stay span to replace the existing truss bridges connecting the city of Charleston and the town of Mount Pleasant along Highway 17. He told the students about the signature diamond-tower design that features the latest in seismic considerations with eight lanes of north/south vehicular traffic and a shared pedestrian bicycle land overlooking the Charleston Harbor.