REU SITE: Summer Program Advancing Techniques in the Applied Learning of Statistics (SPATIAL-Stats) at Georgetown University

This REU award provides funding for the Summer Program Advancing Techniques in the Applied Learning of Statistics (SPATIAL-Stats) at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. This program aims to provide a mentoring structure for students that promotes active engagement in the mathematical sciences and encourages intercultural understanding and educational excellence. The program is geared toward raising the level of mathematical and statistical understanding for undergraduate students and engaging them in creative activities, thereby keeping them in the mathematics and statistics pipeline and helping to increase the percentage of minorities and women who obtain advanced degrees in the mathematical sciences. In this way, the program will help provide the foundations for the next generation of mathematical science researchers to conduct state of the art scientific research and to effectively communicate mathematics and statistics research to a wide audience. Talented students from across the country will be trained by prominent researchers on how to conduct scientific research for publication. The program begins with an intensive three-weeks of lectures in the fields of statistics and mathematics. The students will then spend five weeks actively engaged in research while also participating in networking activities to meet leading researchers across the country. By participating in SPATIAL-Stats, students in the program will interact with other students with different racial/ethnic backgrounds exposing them to excellence and diversity in STEM. Students will receive advanced training in the complex fields of mathematics and statistics to ensure their success in college and beyond. 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.