REU-Site: Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships in Earth and Environmental Sciences (SURFEES)

This summer REU Site program in the Schmid College of Science and Technology at Chapman University will annually provide 12 students selected from two-year community colleges with the opportunity to engage in research projects related to earth and environmental science issues from the molecular to global scale. This REU Site program will provide a student population at community colleges—institutions typically lacking scientific research infrastructure—with hands-on, interdisciplinary research experiences and enhance the recruitment and retention of these students into STEM fields. The program will partner with multiple local community colleges that serve large student communities representing a potential pipeline for STEM workforce development. Faculty mentors include biochemists, biologists, chemists, earth scientists, and food scientists with active undergraduate research groups at Chapman. Southern California is a highly developed urbanized area with considerable natural resources, resulting in a wide range of earth and environmental challenges and problems. Addressing these complex issues requires an interdisciplinary and educated workforce of scientists. Through participation in cutting-edge research with faculty mentors working at the forefront of their respective disciplines, students will engage in complex scientific studies on topics including the transformation pathways of pollutants, biochemistry of nitrogen fixation, dynamics of intertidal ecosystems, and food production efficiency. Projects involve combinations of benchtop experimentation, training and usage of advanced scientific instrumentation, computational modeling, and data analysis. Participants will also engage in professional and career development opportunities including workshops on data visualization, public speaking, presenting research results, applying to fellowships and graduate programs, and career panels. The program will conclude with a university-wide research showcase where participants will give oral and poster presentations summarizing their summer research findings. 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.