Research Experience for Undergraduates-2005

A Communications Workshop was held June 22-23, 2005 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 11-14, Reno, Nevada.

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 the Peppermill Hotel, Reno, Nevada on August 11-14, 2005 and supplied a forum for the REU students to introduce the results of their research. The MAE Center was the host for this year’s symposium.

Six REU interns from the MAE Center joined nine students from MCEER and seven from PEER to give their presentations. Each student provided an abstract of his or her paper. Charles Harris, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, offered the ethics component of the REU experience.

The participating students visited the Nevada Seismological Laboratory on the University of Nevada, Reno campus. They were introduced to the facility by John Anderson, Director of the laboratory. The Seismological Laboratory has overall responsibility for instrumental studies of earthquakes in the Nevada region. It operates a statewide network of seismographic stations and investigates the sizes, frequencies of occurrence, and distribution of earthquakes in the region, and other problems related to seismic risk in Nevada. The students then toured the NEES Equipment Site at the University of Nevada with David Sanders.