General Information

June 11-13, 2008
American Center for Physics
One Physics Ellipse
College Park, MD 20740

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program has been funding undergraduate research site programs for over 20 years. For the first time in about 15 years, representatives from the funded Physics Sites gathered for a two-day workshop to discuss effective practices in the current REU programs and to learn more about effective practices in programs outside of the NSF-REU Physics Sites.

Workshop participants discussed how to:

• Improve their undergraduate research programs
  
• Assess the impact of their programs on the undergraduates
  
• Recruit a diverse group of participants.

The workshop allowed participants to set an agenda for further study of the impact of the physics NSF-REU site program on undergraduate physics education. The broader undergraduate research community can benefit from the dissemination of presentation resources used at the workshop and resources relevant to undergraduate research programs that were identified at the workshop.  In addition, a summary of the workshop discussions will be written and made available at this website.

This website was developed as a part of this project, to organize and make available the diverse array of resources from many disciplines that can be used to improve undergraduate research programs. The report from the workshop allows current and future undergraduate research program directors to learn from the experiences of the workshop participants.

REU Conference Photos

 Photos by Ken Cole/APS