AN REU ENABLES INTENSIVE AND EXTENSIVE MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD RESEARCH: THE EXAMPLE OF AN UPPER JURASSIC DINOSAUR SITE IN THE BIGHORN BASIN, WYOMING

Hope College has a long history of REU participation. Six departments currently hold REU grants, which help sustain a multidisciplinary culture of summer research on campus. Geological and Environmental Sciences (GES) is the most recent department to develop an REU project, and has enhanced the traditional on-campus REU model by featuring a 4-week field component, preceded by a week of orientation and followed by 5 weeks of lab work. In the GES REU, “Paleoenvironmental Characterization of a Dinosaur Site in the Morrison Formation of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming,” 10 students per year develop individual or team projects under the collaborative supervision of faculty from Hope College, the University of Minnesota Duluth, and the Cranbrook Institute of Science.

The REU's focus on group fieldwork yields both scientific and educational benefits. Allowing 10 student researchers to examine diverse aspects of the field site's paleoenvironment ensures that the group addresses the site's scientific questions from multiple perspectives. That the supervising faculty have complementary areas of expertise in paleontology and stratigraphy further facilitates a multidisciplinary approach. The students live and work together in close association during the 4 weeks of the field season, so they have ample opportunity to learn about all other students' research efforts and therefore gain a broader overall understanding of the site and its history. The 4 week field component provides a larger number of students a more sustained field experience than is possible in most other undergraduate research opportunities.

The REU mixes students from different backgrounds, including liberal arts colleges, research universities, and community colleges. The sociological experience of maintaining interpersonal relations in a diverse group can have as great an impact on students as the scientific results. Learning to maintain amicable professional relations in an intensive field research setting is a valuable outcome, one that we explicitly cultivate during the program.