PIRE’s Next Step: Joining Curious Undergraduates to the Team

Recruiting engaged undergraduate students from engineering and liberal arts backgrounds is pivotal to the objectives of PIRE, to that end, substantial efforts were made to ensure application information was thoroughly publicized across the University of Connecticut campus.

The preliminary stage of outreach began with contacting student clubs and organizations listed on the UConntact website that expressed interests and objectives similar to that of the project, these groups included: Women and Minorities in Economics, Honors in Diversity, Spring Hill Valley Farm and The UConn Chapter of National Organization for Women.

Additionally, the six cultural centers as supported by Diversity and Inclusion were contacted, including the African American Cultural Center, Asian American Cultural Center, Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center (PRLACC), Rainbow Center and Women’s Center.

The Human Rights Institute housed by Global Affairs, whose aim is to promote interdisciplinary research and teaching across the university, was also contacted and encouraged to forward the PIRE media to their student database.

 

On October 17, Project Manager and Professor Dr. Zoi Dokou, Undergraduate Coordinator and PhD student Nabil Tueme and undergraduate civil engineering student Genevieve Rigler represented the PIRE project and collected an email list of interested students at the Research Connections 2018 event.

A brochure to coherently summarize the project objectives and undergraduate involvement was created and then designed by Claudia Dijmarescu, media specialist and civil engineering undergraduate PIRE student. The brochure was successfully published into two cycles of the newsletter sent to all Honor Program students and a newsletter to PRLACC students. Twenty copies of the printed version of the Informational Meeting advertisement were distributed to the Homer Babbidge Library, McHugh Hall, Francis L. Castleman Building, Neag School of Education, Office of Early College Programs, ITE Building and the Weston A. Bousfield Psychology Building.

The Informational Meeting was held on November 12, 2018 with twenty students from manifold backgrounds were in attendance.

Categories: News

Published: October 18, 2018