8:38 a.m., July 23, 2009----Fifteen graduate and undergraduate students from 10 institutions in the United States, India, and Sweden are participating in the fifth National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at the University of Delaware. The program is hosted by UD's Disaster Research Center (DRC), the first social science research center in the world devoted to the study of disasters.

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“The DRC-REU is an intensive and highly competitive program,” says Havidán Rodríguez, deputy provost, former DRC director, and principal investigator of the DRC-REU. “It's the only one of its kind in the country.”

The 2009 DRC-REU fellows spent three days in mid-July at the Annual Hazards Research and Applications Workshop in Broomfield, Colo., one of a number of enrichment experiences that complement the course modules and independent summer research projects carried out by the students over a nine-week period.

The multidisciplinary program encompasses the fields of emergency and environmental management, sociology, geography, planning and environmental policy, anthropology, political science, psychology, and engineering.

“This is just the second year that we've had engineering students participating in the program, which reflects the move of both the center and the REU program towards interdisciplinary collaborations,” Rodríguez says. “Effective planning and response requires consideration of both the social science and engineering aspects of disasters.”

DRC Director Sue McNeil is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and two members of this year's REU cohort are civil engineering students, one advised by McNeil and the other by Assistant Professor Chris Meehan. Both of the engineering students are funded by the University Transportation Center (UTC) program at UD, which focuses on resiliency of transportation corridors.

Also, this is the second year that the REU program includes international representation. As part of expanding its global reach and impact, UD has signed institutional agreements with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai and Mid-Sweden University in Ostersund. DRC has very strong collaborative initiatives with these institutions. “Having students from both TISS and Mid-Sweden University,” Rodríguez says, “is aimed at fostering and expanding these global partnerships as well as recognizing the international aspects of disasters.”

The DRC-REU program is organized around two key components: a Summer Research Institute (SRI) and an independent research paper. Through two course modules, presentations by leading disaster researchers, and a series of workshops, the SRI provides students with theoretical and methodological education under the guidance of senior faculty mentors and graduate students and exposure to a variety of research and professional development activities while strengthening the basic foundations needed to enter a graduate program.

Student research projects focus on a range of issues, including disaster mitigation, evacuation, search and rescue, preparedness, response and recovery, warnings and technology, and disaster vulnerability and resilience.

Projects are initiated under the direction of DRC faculty mentors during the second week of the program, and students devote increasing time to hands-on research in the later weeks of the summer. Upon return to their home institutions, the REU trainees complete their projects under the mentorship of home advisers.

“It can be challenging for the students to complete a research project in the limited timeframe of the program,” Rodríguez says. “This approach gives them more time to carry out their projects and provides a bridge between the summer research experience and the work that they're doing at their home institutions. It also sets the stage for ongoing collaborations between the faculty at UD and the various schools represented by the REU participants.”

This year's participants include Christina Dalton (University of Delaware), Jessica Fernandes-Flack (Oklahoma State University), Devin Fisher (Millersville University), Megan Frazier (Western Washington University), Natasha Mata (Florida State University), Kim-Dung Nguyen (Berea College), Samantha Oppenheimer (University of Delaware), Kathryn Sanford (Gettysburg College), Trent Steidley (Oklahoma State University), Ysaye Zamore (Colorado State University), Linda Eliasson (Mid-Sweden University), Siddarth David (Tata Institute for Social Sciences), Sumedha Goel (Tata Institute for Social Sciences), Lauren Lobo (University of Delaware), and Chance Malkin (University of Delaware).

In addition to NSF and the UTC, the DRC-REU program is funded by the Department of Defense and the University of Delaware through the Office of the Provost, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, and DRC.

Article by Diane Kukich