Best Practices for Chemistry REU Programs

Edited by Mark A. Griep and Linette M. Watkins

ACS Symposium Series

Describes excellent models for professional development and mentor-training workshops
Provides undergraduate research advisors the information needed to design beneficial research programs
Includes proposal-writing tips for investigators in the field of chemistry

Best Practices for Chemistry REU Programs

Edited by Mark A. Griep and Linette M. Watkins

Description

This book was conceived as a way to disseminate information about successful NSF-sponsored Chemistry Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Sites. Eleven chapters describe specific REU sites and one chapter describes the Chemistry REU Leadership Group. The authors have shared the expertise they acquired from a broad range of approaches, multi-disciplinary collaborations, and multi-institutional collaborations. Each author contributes distinctive and partially overlapping perspectives into the complex factors that result in running a successful summer research program. Half of the authors participated in a symposium titled "Best Practices for Chemistry REU Programs" at the spring 2017 national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Each described their program's distinctive features in the context of their overall summer experience, such as the integration of deaf and hearing impaired, coordination of an international program, and multi-institutional programs. The other half of the authors participated in one of the symposia hosted by the Chemistry REU Leadership Group at spring ACS national meetings between 2013 and 2016. Each of these symposia focused on a different aspect of successful REU programs. These authors describe excellent models for professional development and mentor training workshops among many others. This book hopes to provide undergraduate research advisors at universities across the nation with information they need to design more thoughtful and beneficial college undergraduate research programs for their majors, and to provide investigators with useful information to write more effective proposals that will fund more summer research programs.

Best Practices for Chemistry REU Programs

Edited by Mark A. Griep and Linette M. Watkins

ACS Symposium Series

1. Overview of Best Practices for Chemistry REU Programs
2. Over Thirty Years of REU Programs in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Alabama
3. Professional Development for REU Students
4. Summer REU Program Integrating Deaf and Hearing Participants in Chemistry Research
5. The TIM Consortium: A Dispersed REU Site at Primarily Undergraduate Institutes
6. Chemistry REU Leadership Group: Support for the Chemistry Undergraduate Research Community
7. The Chemistry REU Program at West Virginia University
8. Summer International REU Program in the United Kingdom
9. Entering Mentoring: A Mentor Training Seminar for REU Mentors
10. Coordination of the Chemistry REU Program at the University of Nebraska?Lincoln
11. Importance of a Truly Cohesive Theme in a REU Program
12. A Distributed, Multi-Institution REU Site on Environmental and Green Chemistry
Editors' Biographies
Author Index
Subject Index

Best Practices for Chemistry REU Programs

Edited by Mark A. Griep and Linette M. Watkins

ACS Symposium Series

Author Information

Edited by Mark A. Griep, Associate Professor of Chemistry, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and Edited by Linette M. Watkins, Professor and Department Head of Biochemistry, James Madison University

Dr. Mark A. Griep is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a biochemist who joined UNL in 1990 and has since published over 40 peer-reviewed papers, most of them about the structure/activity relationships of bacterial DNA replication enzymes but especially about primase, the enzyme that initiates DNA synthesis. In 2017, he was awarded the ACS Helen M. Free Award for Public Outreach for raising awareness about Dr. Rachel Lloyd and for using movies to teach chemical concepts. Lloyd was the first American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry, and who then became a professor at the University of Nebraska. Griep's movie project began as an entertaining and informational outreach activity that he now uses in his classroom. He wrote the book ReAction! Chemistry in the Movies (Oxford University Press) with his artist wife and he currently manages a Facebook page with the same title (although it lacks the exclamation point). Griep is collaborating with

Nebraska Indian Community College and Little Priest Tribal College to develop a two-semester chemistry sequence that connects the chemistry laboratory experiences to tribal community topics. Dr. Linette M. Watkins is a Professor and Department Head of Chemistry and Biochemistry at James Madison University. She came to JMU after spending seventeen years as a faculty member at Texas State University. She is actively engaged in promoting early involvement in undergraduate research, engaging twoyear college students in research opportunities, and using undergraduate research as a tool for the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students in the chemical sciences. She has mentored over 100 undergraduate students in bacterial enzyme research, including several from local two-year colleges. Dr. Watkins was a 2006 NSF Senior Discovery Corps Fellow, supporting a collaborative research community between Texas State and San Antonio College. She was named a 2014 American Chemical Society

Fellow in part for her advocacy on behalf of diversity and inclusion as a former chair of the ACS Committee on Minority Affairs, the ACS Scholars, and the ACS Women Chemists of Color program.

Contributors:

Mark A. Griep
Linette M. Watkins
John B. Vincent
Stephen A. Woski
Holly C. Gaede
Gina MacDonald
Kevin L. Caran
Christine A. Hughey
Judy Johnson Bradley
KC Russell
Shannon M. Biros
Jeffrey D. Evanseck
Brian V. Popp
Michelle Richards-Babb
Terence A Nile
Anne G. Glenn
A. E. Greenberg
Marilyne Stains
Jonathan Velasco
N. I. Hammer
G. S. Tschumper
James A. Rice