REU Site: RIDE - Research for Undergraduates in Transportation Engineering

This three-year REU Site: Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Transportation Engineering will provide undergraduate students an immersive and interdisciplinary educational experience in community engaged research. Improving the transportation experience for all communities is the focus for this project. REU students will develop as well-rounded researchers by learning to design transportation systems that better serve communities; to formulate transportation policies and regulations that lead to more improved and accessible transportation outcomes; and to help bridge communication gaps across disciplines, academia, transportation professionals, and communities of interest. Ten undergraduate students each year will engage in professional development activities about how to persist in STEM and to pursue graduate education and related careers in transportation engineering fields. Participants will be recruited from a variety of institutions nationwide including R1 institutions and community colleges. This project will help build the workforce in a key strategic area – transportation - helping to increase the economic competitiveness of the U.S. by providing opportunities for promising students in community engaged research, design, and planning. The objectives of this REU Site include engaging undergraduate students in transportation research, educating students on convergent research that affects their communities’ transportation decisions, encouraging participants to pursue career pathways in transportation related fields, and enriching the undergraduate student experience through lifelong mentoring. Students will participate in a variety of mentored research projects that require data collection and analysis, such as interviews, focus groups, surveys, and secondary data analysis. In addition to working with interdisciplinary researchers, students will also engage with community partners to collect data and disseminate the results. Outside of the research activities, students will participate many activities over the summer including professional development and communication seminars, technical seminars, field trips, working lunches, broader impacts/technical writing projects, and an end-of-summer poster session. 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.