BSOS Celebrates Scholars of the 2024 Summer Research Initiative and REACH Program
On Thursday, July 25, 2024, the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS) celebrated the undergraduate researchers who completed the colleges’ Summer Research Initiative (SRI), as well as the inaugural Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences’ (HESP) Research, Equity, and Access in Communication and Hearing (REACH) program.
In the Colony Ballroom of the University of Maryland’s Adele H. Stamp Student Union, 15 SRI and seven REACH undergraduate students presented posters to family, friends, faculty, and campus leaders on the research projects they’ve led alongside BSOS faculty. The SRI scholars conducted their research during the course of eight weeks, while living with other students in their cohort on UMD’s campus.
Every BSOS department, plus the Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, was represented by the 2024 SRI scholars. The 2024 group of scholars was the 26th cohort of the SRI program, which has provided summer research training to 311 students who are members of underrepresented groups, and who are interested in pursuing doctoral degrees in the behavioral and social sciences, since its founding in 1999.
Five SRI scholars were UMD students. Others hailed from Macalester College, Lawrence University, Bowie State University, Howard University, Morgan State University, Spelman College, and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez.
“The 2024 SRI continued it's mission of providing research experiences to undergraduates across the complete range of social and behavioral science disciplines with the intent of helping create a more diverse social and behavioral science research, policy, education, and service cadre of professionals,” said Kim Nickerson, SRI Director and BSOS’ Assistant Dean for Diversity, Diversity Officer and Equity Administrator.
HESP received $1.25 million in support from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to create the REACH last summer. Because REACH is a yearlong program that provides up to 12 students who are underrepresented—on the basis of race, ethnicity, disability, or who come from first-generation and/or low-income backgrounds—with the opportunity to get paid $15/hour to work in research labs alongside UMD faculty mentors, some of the inaugural REACH scholars presented work that they began working on earlier this year.
“We are incredibly excited by the success of the first year of the REACH program,” said HESP Professor Matthew Goupell, co-director of REACH. “The University of Maryland has historically had excellent undergraduate research opportunities and a relatively diverse student body. Bringing these aspects together in a specific program is so important to help students learn how to generate new knowledge for humankind, and to help them diversify our biomedical workforce and academy.”
BSOS Dean Susan Rivera provided opening and closing remarks at the celebration, and took a photo with each scholar after they received their certificate of completion.
“I’m proud to be the dean of BSOS for many reasons, but one of them is that we are home to two programs designed to make contributions to the quality of behavioral and social science research, policy, and practice by encouraging students who will bring their diverse life experiences and perspectives to the many vexing problems we address in the behavioral and social sciences,” BSOS Dean Susan Rivera said. “As a college, we are enormously proud to showcase our research training for undergraduates in this way.”
Learn more about the Summer Research Initiative
Published on Thu, Aug 1, 2024 - 10:27AM