Project: REU Site: Ocean Observing for Emerging Ocean Scientists

NSF Award Abstract:
A new Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site will be located at Texas A&M University's campus in College Station, TX. The Geochemical and Environmental Research Group (GERG) and the Department of Oceanography will host 10 REU students for 10 weeks each summer, and the program will focus on innovative ocean observing technologies. Students will have access to a suite of ocean data acquisition technologies incorporated in TAMU's offshore buoy system, glider technology, remote real-time measurements from moored instrumentation, shipboard field surveys with CTD profiling and water sampling. A group project to develop and deploy a glider mission in the Gulf of Mexico onboard a research vessel will promote team building. Training modules on sensors, data analysis, graphical representation of oceanographic data, data management, and science writing will be provided. Students will participate in weekly REU seminars, and at the program end, they will demonstrate their communication skills with a final written report and a seminar presentation at the GERG REU Student Research Symposium. Although the program is open to students who are US citizens or permanent residents attending any university, local recruitment efforts will be coordinated with faculty in the NSF-funded Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program which supports mentoring of STEM majors across TAMU branch campuses (Kingsville, Corpus Christi, Prairie View and West Texas).

Related Projects:
This project is a renewed/continued by project "REU Site: Observing the Ocean" (OCE-1849932); see: https://www.bco-dmo.org/project/877594.