Senior Personnel

The principal investigators will be responsible for the day-to-day administration, development, and implementation of the DRC-REU Program. They will closely monitor the SRI and student progress, will ensure that all trainees are assigned to a faculty mentor, and will monitor and ensure the effective administration of the program evaluations. The following section provides a brief background on the five (5) senior personnel/mentors who will be actively engaged in the DRC-REU program. It should be noted that of these five research mentors, two (2) are Latinos and two (2) are women.

Dr. Havidán Rodriguez (Principal Investigator and Mentor ) is the DRC Director. He has received funding from NSF and the Ford Foundation for research projects aimed at providing hands-on research training for undergraduate students. While Director of the Minority Affairs Program at the ASA (1995-98), Dr. Rodriguez was the co-principal investigator and Program Coordinator of the Minority Opportunities through School Transformation (MOST) Program, funded by the Ford Foundation. Working with 18 institutions of higher education, MOST was aimed at producing systemic change at the graduate and undergraduate level, particularly focusing on enhancing department climate, curriculum transformation, hands-on research training for undergraduates, building department-wide mentoring systems, and increasing the number of scholars of color throughout the academic pipeline. Dr. Rodriguez was also the principal investigator for the Certification Program in Applied Social Research (PPISA) at CISA which provided extensive research training to undergraduate students in the social sciences. This program was extremely successful, with 100% (n=16) of student participants being admitted to professional and graduate programs in Puerto Rico and the US mainland. Rodriguez is currently a co-principal investigator on an NSF-funded collaborative project between the ASA and the Social Science Data Analysis Network (SSDAN) at the University of Michigan aimed at integrating quantitative data analysis into the undergraduate curriculum early, often, and sequentially. Twelve institutions of higher education are actively participating in this program. During his tenure at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM), Dr. Rodriguez worked with and sponsored, on average, three undergraduate students per year (1998-2003) to present their research at the MOST roundtables during the ASA's annual meeting. Also, he sponsored and mentored five (5) undergraduate students to participate in the University of Michigan 's Population Fellows Program's Summer Internship Program. Three of these students are currently in Ph.D. programs and the others are completing their undergraduate degrees. Rodriguez is currently mentoring two undergraduate students, a McNair Scholar and a student who received a Social Science Scholars Award.

Since 1975, Dr. Joanne M. Nigg (Co-Principal Investigator and Mentor), former DRC Director and Professor of Sociology, has been involved in research on the societal response to natural, technological, and environmental hazards and disasters. Dr. Nigg has been a Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on 17 NSF- or FEMA-funded projects covering subjects such as: hazard awareness and behavioral response to disasters by individuals and organizations; attributions of responsibility for disaster outcomes; factors related to the development of governmental hazard reduction policies and actions; evaluations of hazard and risk reduction programs; risk assessment and policy preferences among the public and key decision-makers; and disaster recovery of households, businesses and communities. Several of the NSF projects received REU supplemental funding as well. Dr. Nigg is the co-author or editor of seven books and over 90 articles, book chapters, and papers on individual, organizational, and governmental response to, preparation for, mitigation of, and recovery from natural and technological threats and disasters. Dr. Nigg was the first woman and social scientist to serve as President of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI). Throughout her professional career, Dr. Nigg has worked extensively with both graduate and undergraduate students, mentoring them in the development of their research skills and their theoretical understandings of societal order and dynamics. As Director of DRC, she began a program to fund students' travel to professional meetings to present papers related to DRC research efforts. Within the past five years, she has also sponsored two undergraduate students who received the University of Delaware's prestigious Social Science Scholar's Award, providing a unique opportunity for undergraduates with junior standing to conduct independent but guided research projects, leading to professional presentations of their work. As the Coordinator of the undergraduate Sociology concentration in Emergency and Environmental Management, Dr. Nigg will be advisor to all of the majors who concentrate in this area, as well as being responsible for the development and monitoring of students' internship placements.

Dr. Tricia Wachtendorf (Faculty Mentor ) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice and a core faculty member at DRC. She has almost eight years of research experience at the Center. As DRC Field Director and Research Coordinator, Dr. Wachtendorf has played an instrumental role in training and supervising both graduate and undergraduate research assistants. She has played a lead role on several large-scale research projects funded by such organizations as the NSF, PERI, and FEMA. Dr. Wachtendorf also played a lead role in DRC's study of the multi-organizational response to the September 11, 2001 disaster in New York City , conducting and supervising field work, document research, and data analysis. Most recently, Dr. Wachtendorf has been engaged in organizing, planning, and conducting professional development and training workshops for graduate and undergraduate students at DRC, focusing on conducting in-depth interviews, focus groups, mail surveys, and quick response research. She has published and presented on such areas as improvisation and creativity in disaster response, transnational disasters, community-based programs, mitigation, risk perception, and disaster popular culture.

Dr. Benigno Aguirre (Faculty Mentor ) arrived at DRC in 2001. Since then, he has organized, in cooperation with Dr. Joanne Nigg, an undergraduate concentration on emergency and environmental management for sociology majors at the University of Delaware . As part of this new concentration, he teaches courses on the sociology of disasters and on emergency management. In his former position at Texas A&M University , Dr. Aguirre participated in the ASA's MOST Program (described above). Dr. Aguirre has provided financial assistance and mentorship to close to 15 minority undergraduate and graduate students. Several of his NSF projects have received REU supplemental funding to enhance undergraduate research training. He has also served as mentor and thesis advisor for a number of graduate students. Dr. Aguirre has an extensive research and publication track record in the study of disasters.