Student Learning Outcomes from an Environmental Engineering Summer Research Program

Intensive summer research programs have the opportunity to help students achieve a wide variety of learning outcomes, while also deepening their interest in graduate school and increasing their overall confidence. This research explored the learning outcomes from an NSFfunded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site in environmental engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. The ten-week REU site included lab, field, and modeling projects on the quality and treatment of water, soil, and air. The REU site successfully attracted an over-representation of female and minority participants. Among the 2011 students there was a statistically significant gain in the likelihood that the students would pursue an MS degree based on preand postsurvey ratings. Students’ self-ratings of knowledge and skills related to ABET outcomes and other topics showed significant improvement in 22 of 26 areas, based on Likert-scale responses on preand postsurveys. The self-rated confidence in personal ability to execute various tasks did not show significant gains on the post survey for 12 of 13 items. For post-survey items that asked about gains due to the program, some items showed statistically significant differences in responses based on race/ethnicity, previous research experience, year (freshman/sophomores vs. juniors/seniors), and major. The data indicated that students from all demographics could benefit from the research experience. Mentoring varied widely between individual students, projects, and years which appeared to have significant impacts on the students’ responses. The paper concludes with recommendations for other REU sites to consider.