Enhancing the global perspective of reu site students

Abstract

Developing a diverse, internationally competitive and globally-engaged science and engineering workforce is one of the goals of the National Science Foundation. In this paper we describe our motivation for and experience with incorporating an international component into our NSFfunded summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site. Our experience shows that including international students in our REU program is relatively inexpensive and highly beneficial to all participating students and to the educational institutions that the students attend. This paper includes guidelines for dealing with the most important issues related to incorporating international students into an REU program, as well as some conclusions which may be beneficial to other REU programs. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2007.