Collection

2020 Mid-Atlantic Spring Conference

Authors

Dimitrios Bolkas, Pennsylvania State University, Lehman; Jeffrey Daniel Chiampi II, The Pennsylvania State University; Jason Robert Kepner, The Pennsylvania State University ; Luke Jacob Kepner; David Neilson

surveying students requires an extensive number oflaboratories (indoor and outdoor). Outdoor laboratories are used to develop skills with surveyinginstruments, teach field techniques, and reinforce concepts taught in lectures. Instructors use aconsiderable portion of the allotted time to provide an overview of the lab, which reduces thetime students can spend in the field conducting the lab. Due to the spatial nature of the tasks, it isoften difficult for students to visualize the steps to complete the labs. As a result, students areoften underprepared for the activities. In outdoor labs students move from one location toanother to collect data related to each task. During the lab students frequently have questions, butit is difficult for the

Collection

2020 Mid-Atlantic Spring Conference

Authors

Janet Liou-Mark, New York City College of Technology; Reggie Blake, New York City College of Technology; Reina Li

. Field trips to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cary Institute,and the American Museum of Natural History are also part of the summer experience. Training onhow to write an abstract, write a scientific paper, design a poster presentation, and present anelevator speech on their research projects was also provided. Additionally, the participants weregiven an overview of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and they were required to take asample exam under standard GRE testing conditions. Sessions on how to get the best letters ofrecommendation were also offered.ParticipantsThe 49 participants of the study were engineering-related majors who participated in City Tech’sNSF REU program from academic years 2014-2018. The participants majored in

Collection

2020 Mid-Atlantic Spring Conference

Authors

Susan Mitchell, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Katharine Cole, University of Maryland Baltimore County; Anupam Joshi, UMBC

supplement their major with thecomputing minor. The second are students who will define new interdisciplinary majors rootedin computing using UMBC’s Individualized Study (INDS) program in which students follow acore curriculum and a set of approved courses from a variety of disciplines. These two groupscover a large number of students interested in computing but not wanting to be computer sciencemajors.3. Piloting of the First Computing Minor CourseThe first course in UMBC’s planned computing minor is a variation on the existing ComputerScience I course required for majors but restricted to non-majors. It is a four-credit course thatincludes a hands-on laboratory component. Both versions of the course use the Python languageand cover the same