Research Experience for Undergraduates in Atmospheric Sciences, Engineering, and Technology at the CSU-CHILL National Radar Facility

The Research Experience for Undergraduates program is a NSF sponsored program to introduce undergraduate students to research, with the goal of giving them the "graduate experience", and increasing the number of students that go on to graduate education and research careers. The CSU-CHILL REU is a long running program that takes a small group of students every summer, and over that period introduces students to facets of research life and the research process. The program emphasizes working with real data, from real operational instruments, alongside practitioners in the field. Each student is paired with a mentor who helps guide them through the research process. Students are responsible for writing a project proposal, a midterm report, and a final report. Additionally students prepare weekly presentations, take field trips, and other enrichment activities. The CSU-CHILL REU program has an outstanding track record of students publishing their work at national and international conferences.

This presentation will go over the REU program at the CSU-CHILL facility, as well as presenting advice accumulated from years of running a REU program. We will show examples of student work that was published at conferences and then discuss the outcome of students, and indicators that we have found signal success in students, both in the REU program, and later in graduate school.