Resurrecting the Advancing Space Sciences through Undergraduate Research Experience (ASSURE) Program in the Middle of a Pandemic
Abstract
The Advancing Space Sciences through Undergraduate Research Experience (ASSURE) Program is an NSF-sponsored undergraduate research program at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley which is targeted primarily toward California community college students from populations underrepresented in the space sciences. A previous iteration of the program ran from 2014 through 2017 (under different management) to rave reviews from both the interns and the mentors. After a few years of personnel transitions, we decided to re-propose the program last year in the hopes that the worst of the pandemic would be over by summer 2021. However, the winter of 2020/2021, when funding decisions were being announced, saw the highest COVID-19 numbers in the US resulting in the decision to hold a completely virtual summer program. Luckily, we were able to draw from the community of lessons learned from other REU programs that abruptly became remote during summer 2020. In this presentation, we highlight the structure of our program and some of the strategies we employed to try to bring a sense of community to the virtual environment. The 2021 ASSURE program is funded by NSF grant number 2050736.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFMED13A..09F