Team-based, transdisciplinary, and inclusive practices for undergraduate research

Abstract

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We present work-in-progress reflecting on the initial year of a distinctive summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Our REU model combines fundamental research in computational sensing with a scholarly context that connects computer science with computational liberal arts. Students are intellectually stimulated to make sense of people's behaviors and cognitive processes with multimodal sensing hardware and software. In doing so, they explore the fundamental challenges found at the intersection of computing, the human experience, and scientific interrogation. The placement of the human experience at the core of the research theme enables an environment that stimulates and cultivates an innovative undergraduate research model. We highlight outcomes from the first year and discuss three emerging practices that are central to our REU framework: (1) team-based collaborative training; (2) transdisciplinary integration; and (3) systematic prioritization of inclusiveness. We also describe how these practices are incorporated into our overall undergraduate research framework and touch upon lessons learned from feedback collected.