Building an Intellectual Community ("Coffee Talk"), contributed by Pamela Abshire, University of Maryland

From CISEREUPI

• Idea: To nurture the sense of intellectual community we hold regular (weekly) CoffeeTalk meetings of all the REU participants. This event is an informal meeting of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate participants, with light refreshments. Several kinds of activities take place in alternating weeks during the CoffeeTalk hour:

1. Early in the summer (week 2 or 3), students present project proposals
2. Midway through the summer, students brief everyone on the progress in their research
3. Throughout the summer, Faculty mentors give short technical talks on their recent research (focusing on the process of discovery)
4. Throughout the summer, we hold a series of ethics seminars/discussions in which students learn important ethical concepts, principles, and skills. In 2009 our ethics seminars were:
   1. Introduction to Ethics and Professional Responsibilities
   2. Case Studies and Ethical Problem Solving
   3. Research Ethics and Responsibility for Ensuring Research Integrity
   4. Intellectual Property Rights

• Objective: To build a sense of intellectual community through weekly informal technical interactions amongst the REU participants, graduate student mentors, and faculty mentors.

• What Works Well: Generally the CoffeeTalk hour is successful. We use it to serve many purposes, but it seems like a reasonable balance between time devoted to research and to program activities.

• What Doesn’t Work So Well: Because of budget restrictions the refreshments are rather modest. In our first year we did not even encourage faculty and grad students to attend for this reason, but we started inviting and encouraging everyone to attend in the second year because it is so important to bring the community together.

• Assessment Data: On the issue of whether or not the social functions were helpful in building a sense of community, 100% of the students in 2009 agreed, with 46% strongly agreeing.

Contributed by Pamela Abshire, BIEN REU Program, University of Maryland

Back to Mentoring Ideas