Thank you for visiting the NAC video in which we briefly share our experiences pivoting from a traditional face-to-face summer research program to a virtual environment. This experience was novel in several ways: 

(1) five research sites collaborated to offer virtual research to students

(2) the entire cohort of 15 students - previously physically located at research sites around the country - met together, several times each week, to discuss their research, engage in professional development learning, and participate in cohort-building/bonding activities, and 

(3) for the first time, the summer program and annual meeting were developed and delivered by NAC program undergraduate and graduate student alums.

The NAC program’s focus is on mitigating and removing barriers to full participation in STEM by minoritized students. COVID, and the murder of George Floyd, combined to create a sustained, distressing environment. The NAC program, led by graduate student NAC alums, stepped up to use their knowledge and experience to create and implement a new kind of summer research experience and annual meeting. 

We'd love to hear how your REU or summer student program adapted to the challenged created by COVID.

Good Morning Everyone!

The student voices in this video were inspiring! It was so evident that this program was transformative for many of the participants. I’d love to hear a bit more about what a given participant might have done throughout the program. What was the nature of their research (I'm sure they are all involved in different projects, so maybe just an example or two)? How did their participation in this program support their research?  How did you measure how this program impacted their research? In some sense the video perfectly answered that question with the enthusiastic testimonies of the participants themselves, but I'd love to hear if you queried them through a survey to figure out how this virtual community impacted their involvement in research.

Thank you for your interest in the NAC program! I will let Alia Wofford and Angelina Gallego (who actually led, and/or participated in, the summer program and annual meeting) say more about the students' experiences.

The NAC program is much more comprehensive than typical REU programs: programming includes research projects with leading astronomers, but also offers extensive professional and personal development opportunities, along with role models and real conversations about the social and structural barriers that affect minoritized students. The NAC program attempts to mitigate (and change) those barriers. Importantly -especially critical last summer- the NAC program offers access to mental health resources. 

Surveys of the students consistently demonstrate that the peer- and near-peer mentoring, and the strong cohort model, are arguably the most important and impactful components of the NAC program. The students themselves, and especially the now-graduate student alums, are absolutely key to the success of the program (meaningful support for the student participants).

Regarding the students' research: I can offer a link to the talks that the NAC students gave about their research projects:

https://web.cvent.com/event/62809842-b619-446f-...

The projects were conducted with scientists from NRAO, Space Telescope Science Institute, Princeton University, Michigan State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and included impressive research in the realms of both radio and optical astronomy:

Structure of the Stellar Disk in the Outer Milky Way - Leonardo Clarke

GMC Dust Masses and CO-to-Dust Conversion Factors in the Whirlpool Galaxy - Samantha Garza

Looking into the History of Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC1313 & Focuses on Finding the Chemical Abundance - Autumn Winch

Analyzing the Surface Brightness of Galaxies in the Perseus Cluster - Malik Bossett

Understanding the LEE of Heavy Elements by Constraining Nuclear Input - Tuesday Cabang

Analysis of Properties of Quasar Host Galaxies - Jasmine Washington

Galaxy Mass Estimates from Tracer Kinematics - Allison Erena

Predicting the Galaxy Merger Rate to Be Observed By JWST - Teddy Pena

Forecasting the Sensitivity for Low-luminosity Galaxies in the Local Volume with LSST+Roman+Euclid - Carlos Ortiz-Quintana

Searching for Twins of PTF11kx - Jacquie Hernandez

Source Separation: Host Galaxies of Quasars - Rahim Salhi

Intrinsic Shapes of Low Surface Brightness Galaxies - Majid Mohammed

Comprehensive SEDs of Intermediate to High Mass Stars from Infrared to Radio - Azia Robinson

The NGC 1275 High Velocity System: The Verging Merge - Aliyah Postell

Very Large Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Imaging of Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS) Detections - Mihika Rao

 

 

Lyndele, Angelina & Alia,

This sounds like a terrific project.  How hard/easy was it to have the students connected with astronomical viewing as you moved to online learning? This might be a good way to dramatically expand the original program.

Lyndele,

Thank you for this amazing response to my questions. I am truly blown away by this project. These students are not only working with leading astronomers, but doing incredible research projects, and then becoming part of a peer-based community that has the power to transform their lives. 

In particular I appreciated this line from your response: "Surveys of the students consistently demonstrate that the peer- and near-peer mentoring, and the strong cohort model, are arguably the most important and impactful components of the NAC program. The students themselves, and especially the now-graduate student alums, are absolutely key to the success of the program (meaningful support for the student participants)."

As a mathematics instructor, one of the best programs I ever worked with was called "The Merit Workshop" at UIUC (in Urbana-Champaign), which replaced the standard college calculus recitations sections (2 hours a week) with a six-hour collaborative workshop. The students basically taught each other and the instructors were facilitators, very rarely offering hints or guidance, but mostly redirecting student questions to their peers. Such an incredible community developed and many of the students (all from underserved populations) went on to become math, science, and engineering majors.  Also, very often the top ten scores or so on the large lecture exams were earned by students from this program.

So anyway, again, I am just blown away by the work you are doing and wish this could be adopted in all sorts of different fields. The lives more programs like this could change!

 

It sounds like this virtual format has really enhanced the students' research experiences through the connections with researchers from around the world and through this student-driven approach to research. Great work! I would love to hear more specifics about the students' research.

Thanks for asking about the students' research, Ashley! In October, the students presented their summer research, via Zoom. The videos and/slides are available here: https://web.cvent.com/event/62809842-b619-446f-....

Most of the projects were centered around astronomy (both optical and radio), and were presented at the American Astronomical Society Annual meeting in January 2021.

Sorry for being late to the game: lots of undergraduate and HS research had to move online; for some, that was almost a natural, for others not so much. Can you speculate under hat circumstances URE are conducive to remote work?

I found it refreshing that the students were running the program and really able to take charge of the learning experience, especially during such a critical pivot to the virtual learning environment. What were the most important learnings you took away from the experience that others can apply to make their own virtual learning and research environments more successful?

Hi Amy,

Thanks for this observation! I agree; I was so impressed by the way that the alums stepped up to plan and implement, on very short notice, a new kind of summer experience. As it happens, the students wrote a paper about their experiences, their take-aways, and their recommendations!  It is available here: http://arxiv.org/abs/2105.04713. 

My lesson? The alums are much better at planning and running student-focused events than I am. This summer, the alums will again be running the program, incorporating their lessons learned and recommendations.