2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Community colleges (CCs) play an important role in workforce development across the U.S. their main mission is to provide academic preparation and skills training to prepare students for jobs or to transfer to four-year colleges and universities. In recognizing the importance of CCs in workforce development and student training, Northeastern University recently received a grant for an REU site. The site recruits only CC students from a specific geographic region with the goal of preparing students to either join the workforce or transfer to higher education.
The REU site, called REU Pathways, main field of research is smart engineering focusing on four research themes: AI/Machine Learning, smart infrastructure, smart materials, and smart health. The REU site runs for three years, recruits 10 CC students per year, and runs for 10 weeks during each year summer. This REU program is a commuter program, providing travel expenses, food vouchers and a laptop in lieu of housing. In Week 1, all students participate in a weeklong program of Engineering Essentials to build their engineering skillset.
Week 1 is designed to focus on learning how to use the SparkFun Inventor’s kit required to conduct design projects and use the maker space lab. Week 1 is also designed to acquaint students with Northeastern University and help them connect/network with mentor faculty and student mentors.
Weeks 2 – 10 focus on developing social skills, in addition to research and engineering. "soft” skills" weekly sessions are planned during these weeks and will be conducted by the project team. Sample topics covered in these sessions include DEI, Ethics, study skills, graduate school workshop, updating your LinkedIn profile and resume, preparing final presentations, and developing a poster, to name a few. Students will also have additional research seminars they will be invited to over the course of the summer in collaboration with other programs – generally offered on Wed at noon from late June through July.

The daily activities of each of Weeks 2-10 are as follows. CC students spend the morning (9:00 AM – 12:00 noon) in the research laboratory working on their research projects. Students break for group lunch from 12:00 noon – 1:00 PM. Students go back to their research labs from 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM. This daily schedule takes place on Monday – Thursday each week. Friday of each week is reserved for field trips and/or workshops (full and/or half a day).

The paper discusses the detailed logistics and implementation of the REU Pathway program in the first year. The paper also discusses the observations of students’ struggles during the 10 weeks. The paper also discusses the lessons learned and feedback that will be implemented in Year 2 and Year 3 of the site to alleviate these struggles and pitfalls of Year 1. One of the important lessons learned is that we did not include daily meetings with all students to foster community building to ensure students feel connected, especially since this is a commuter program. Other important lessons are to be discussed in the paper.