The solicitation for summer research projects for undergraduates from the CRA-W is out: the DREU. I highly recommend proposing a project. For those who haven’t heard of it, the DREU are Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (from Underrepresented Groups in Computer Science and Engineering). How it works: profs suggest projects; students apply; the fine people who run DREU match students to profs, handle payment and logistics for the students; the students show up and you get them for 10 weeks. It has a very high reward to effort ratio.
The students are amazing. I had one student through DREU two summers ago. It worked out so well, she came back as my Masters student, and I hope she’ll continue to do a Ph.D. with me. (Recruitment tool, anyone?) I would have hoped to repeat this last summer, but I instead advised two (also amazing) students through an in-house REU program run by the math department at OSU.
The deadline for suggesting projects is February 15, and generally they are short on projects, not on students.
I was wondering: since this is intended for underrepresented groups (and the website is quite clear on this point), is there any point submitting a project idea if one is NOT part of an underrepresented group ? I ask because you mentioned that the system is short on projects.
What a great program! Thanks for the post about this. I sent out an email about it to the Women in CS group at UCSD, encouraging the undergrads to think about applying.
To answer Suresh’s question. It seems that if one is interested in submitting a project idea but one is NOT part of any minority group that it is still worth a try. It appears that not all the mentors from last year were part of a minority group (http://cra-w.org/ArticleDetails/tabid/77/ArticleID/159/Default.aspx).
@Suresh, non underrepresented-minorities can indeed be advisors. I think they give preference in the assignments to match “like with like”. However, as they are generally flush with student applications and not so much with faculty advisors, in past years they have asked faculty whether they would be willing to match funds or fully fund a summer student, but take advantage of the program as a way to recruit/work with a great student.