The Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Cryospheric Sciences REU at the University of Colorado Boulder

The ATOC REU site aims to provide a diverse group of undergraduate students an in-depth, engaging learning and research training experience and professional growth opportunities in the broad areas of atmospheric, oceanic, and cryospheric science. The ATOC REU site creates engaging research experiences for underrepresented REU students to develop a toolkit for success in a STEM program and beyond, which may include graduate school or a professional career in STEM, thereby fostering REU students' sustained interests in STEM, and establishing a diverse talent pool of students who will pursue graduate education or STEM-related careers. This toolkit includes data analysis, scientific writing, and scientific presentation skills, which will be developed via structured mentoring from faculty, graduate students, and other researchers, as well as strong support by peers in cohorts that form learning and research communities, and support the formation of an identity as a scientist.

A key component of the ATOC REU is the broad engagement of the academic department and graduate student leadership: Since the inception of our program in 2021, the vast majority of our department’s faculty have mentored students. Furthermore, each summer the majority of our department’s graduate students are involved in various capacities as graduate student mentor, python office hour support staff, python bootcamp instructors, weekly check-in mentors, events planners, and evaluators. In addition to building community within our department, these opportunities for graduate students allow them to develop the organizational and mentoring skills that are commonplace in academia but rarely formally acknowledged. There is also active department involvement in the planning process of the REU that spans the full academic year. Departmental graduate students work alongside faculty members through budget planning, IRB approval processes, grant writing, and other professional development activities to equip these students to support REUs throughout their careers.

Further, the ATOC REU focuses on partnership with minority serving institutions for cohort building: We work with two minority serving institutions (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and Metropolitan State University of Denver) to build and support our student cohort. We select multiple students from each partner institution each year. The aim of this structure is twofold: 1. To create a sense of identity for our students within the REU program and 2. To build trust and alumni networks at each partner institution.

Finally, a key feature of our REU is our Python bootcamp. To prepare students who may pursue scientific careers within or outside of academia, we conduct a 2-week intensive python bootcamp at the beginning of our program. This bootcamp focuses on teaching students the basics of python coding, as well as introductory data analysis and visualization skills needed for their summer projects. To address students’ diverse range of coding experience, the bootcamp is designed with a “Low Floor, High Ceiling” pedagogical approach, introducing some students to coding for the first time, as well as challenging more experienced students. Program evaluation showed increased confidence in programming skills.

This presentation will provide more details about our Python Bootcamp approach as well as highlighting the benefits and challenges of our dispersed mentoring approach. We will also summarize outcomes and gains for the REU students.