Interested in serving as a mentor to students who participate in a research experience in 2024? CIRES is the host of multiple research experience programs that work with different student populations and different topics. Click or scroll down to learn more about the following programs, including contacts:
- Research Experience for Community College Students Program
- Global Sustainability Scholars Early Career Fellows
- Climate Adaptation Scientists of Tomorrow
Research Experience for Community College Students
RECCS is a 9-week paid summer research experience for community college students. Mentors are invited from any CIRES or NOAA science background and must be physically on campus for the duration of the summer.
Mentors will attend a training session, 1.5 hours via Zoom. Faculty mentors need to meet with the program to discuss plans to support the student and attend one training session. Mentors need to provide guidance on weekly student deliverables, scheduled to support their final presentation deliverables at the end of the summer. These include: background/intro, methods, figures describing results, discussion, conclusion, powerpoint slides, poster layout. The weekly RECCS workshops provide students with general guidance on completing each of these sections but mentors are responsible for validating the scientific accuracy and rigor of their student’s work.
Past RECCS earth science research topics computational projects (for example, some students have taken data collected by buoys in the ocean and weather data from satellites to create models of the Madden-Julian oscillation) to very hands-on projects (one student studied how shrubs enable adaptation to climate change in sub-alpine environments, which required a lot of fieldwork, driving to the Mountain Research Station and hiking out to the study site to collect data and samples). Some students have worked at the intersection of computation and lab work, for example, one student studied fossils of ants to deduce evolutionary relationships between dino-age insects and our modern arthropods. Some projects are also a little to the left of earth sciences but still holding hands with the topic, such as a computational analysis of economic impacts of follow-through on climate change commitments of the G7 countries or a lab work-intensive survey of soil bacteria, seeking alternative antibiotics for drug-resistant infections. The important part is to design a project with one research question that is reasonably completable within ~2–3 weeks. Students typically take about 2–3 weeks to find their stride in lab, the first and last week do not allow for lab work, and save 1–2 weeks for working on deliverables.
During the final week of the program, there will be two sessions where students will present their final work: a poster session (about 2 hours) and an oral presentation session (about 3 hours). We highly encourage mentors and the whole lab to attend both! We always provide snacks and drinks!
RECCS Contact: Alicia.Christiansen@colorado.edu
Global Sustainability Scholars Early Career Fellows
The Global Sustainability Scholars Early Career Fellows program engages currently enrolled graduate students from around the country in interdisciplinary sustainability research. The 2024 Fellowships will likely be remote.
Mentors are expected to guide the GSS Fellows in the design of meaningful research or related activities that serve the project and the career goals of the Fellow. These activities should culminate in the production of one or more tangible research products, such as booklets, academic posters, academic papers, or other significant outcomes.
Mentors will be compensated for their participation. This program runs for 10-weeks, from May 21-July 26 2024. Mentors are asked to meet a few times with their assigned Fellow(s) 1-2 months prior to the program start date to map out summer research projects. Throughout the program, mentors provide guidance to research projects and engage in bi-weekly progress surveys. One mentor training workshop will occur in May 2024.
GSS contact: martha.walker@colorado.edu, kirsten.rowell@colorado.edu
Climate Adaptation Scientists of Tomorrow Fellows
We are seeking faculty research mentors for the Climate Adaptation Scientists of Tomorrow (CAST) Program. This is a highly competitive program at the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) to support undergraduate students from communities that have been historically excluded from and/or are under-represented in STEM fields. We have had GREAT students in the past, and they have been supported by some FANTASTIC research mentors!! We have some funds to help cover your time (e.g., some summer salary).
Do any of you have projects that might be good fits for an undergrad researcher? Examples of past projects include understanding corporate investments into climate adaptation or mitigation efforts, sampling and analyzing watersheds after the Cameron and Marshall Fires to understand post-fire water quality, health, etc. (field and lab work), ground-truthing remote sensing data, and identifying disproportionately impacted communities in Colorado to be included in a state vulnerability study.
Putting your potential project in this initial list does not commit you to working with a student at this point! Right now, we are just collecting potential research opportunities for the program applicants so that they can rank their preferred programs (there are CAST programs at three other universities). Our plan is to connect the top applicants with potential mentors in late winter/early spring and let the mentors weigh in on whether they’d like to work with the student(s) or not.
Mentors must have a research project related to climate change or climate change adaptation that an undergraduate student can work on for 10 weeks during summer 2024 and 2025 (same student). They provide mentorship and guidance regarding the research topic and careers in STEM fields more generally by meeting with the student in person at least once per week (due to program constraints, advisors must be located in the Boulder area, particularly in 2024; potentially negotiable in the students second summer 2025). Mentors attend a pre-summer virtual meeting to meet students and set expectations (coordinated and facilitated by Heather at the NC CASC), a welcome event, and an end-of-summer project presentations (roughly last week of May and last week of July) if at all possible. We have some program funds to compensate you for your time and effort in this program.
CAST contact: Heather..yocum@colorado.edu
SOARS
NSF SOARS program is a bridge and career pathways program for students from marginalized communities in the Earth System Sciences. The program is dedicated to broadening participation in the atmospheric and related sciences by engaging students in hands-on summer research. NSF SOARS is open to have research projects outside of the traditional scientific research, such as communication, education, technical, policy, social sciences, etc.
To sign up to be a Mentor, please fill out this form.
To learn more about mentoring for NCAR|UCAR|UCP, we invite you to join us at an upcoming Open House. See below for the dates and zoom information:
January 16 at 10:00 AM MT
ID: 91582782151
Passcode: LaLqyn52
February 7 at 2:00 PM MT
ID: 93379400632
Passcode: 39PXwqRe
