Welcome to the 2011 CISE REU PI Meeting
The 2011 CISE REU PI Meeting will be held in Pasadena, California on Thursday, March 17 and Friday, March 18. The conference venue is the Pasadena Westin.
The registration deadline is Friday, February 11, at 5 PM Eastern Time.
Meeting Booklet
Participants receive a copy of the meeting booklet, but if you don't have yours to hand, you can find it on-line here (but it it 20MB, which, depending on your connection speed, might take a while to download).
Where is Pasadena?
Pasadena is a picturesque city of approximately 150,000 residents in Los Angeles county. The city is nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and is home to Caltech, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Rose Bowl, and several exceptional museums and botanical gardens.
Should I Come?
Each CISE REU site is expected to send one PI to this meeting. The hotel, food, and registration costs for that PI will be covered by the grant funding this conference. New PIs will also have their travel costs covered. We will provide all meals on Thursday and Friday.
Additional PIs or guests at the meeting must pay these costs themselves. Our grant does not permit us to fund more than one PI per site. See more below on arrangements for visitors.
When Should I Come?
You are welcome to arrive on Wednesday, March 16. We will cover room costs for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights.
The meeting officially begins at noon on Thursday, March 17 and ends at 5:30 PM on Friday, March 18. There is an optional dinner at Il Fornaio on Friday evening from 6-8 PM (no charge for designated PIs, cost included in the registration fees for other participants).
New PIs should attend a new PI workshop from 9 AM to noon on Thursday, March 17. All others are welcome to participate in one of two excursions that morning: One to the extraordinarily beautiful Huntington Botanical Gardens and the other to Caltech to meet with the director of the Caltech summer research program and to visit the labs of two computer science faculty members. You will be asked to indicate your preferences for these tours on the registration website. We will make every effort to accommodate your first choice, but capacity constraints may limit the number of participants in one of the two outings. We will confirm your excursion shortly after the registration process concludes on Feburary 11.
Travel
Most visitors are likely to fly into LAX which is 28 miles away from the hotel. Travel time is likely to be 40-60 minutes, depending on traffic.
Burbank Airport is a smaller and easier airport to use and is only 14 miles (25-35 minutes) from the hotel, but fewer airlines fly there and flights schedules are more limited.
Both airports are serviced by SuperShuttle and Prime Time Shuttle. One-way fares between the airport and hotel are approximately $25. Reservations are recommended.
The Conference Venue and Hotel
The Pasadena Westin is located within a half mile of many of Pasadena's landmarks and shopping areas. There are nice cafe's, museums, bookstores, and restaurants in the area.
Registration
The conference registration website is at http://www.cs.hmc.edu/reu-pi/register.pl. The registration deadline is Friday, February 11 at 5 PM Eastern. When you register at the registration site, you will also see a link to the Pasadena Westin's REU PI meeting room reservation website. You will need to register there as well to reserve your room. You will then receive a confirmation number that you will enter at the main REU PI meeting site. If you register after the deadline, we cannot guarantee a room since our hotel block contract expires. Please make sure to register through the Westin's REU PI meeting link in order to reserve your room as part of our block. Please note that you will be registering BOTH at the conference registration website AND at the hotel website to reserve your room.
When you register at the Westin site, you will be asked to provide your credit card. This is simply to confirm the reservation and to cover any special expenses that you incur at the hotel. If you are the representative from your PI site, the three nights of hotel costs will be covered by us. Otherwise, the cost will be billed to your credit card.
Preliminary Program
Below is the preliminary program. Some details may change and we will announce the final program by e-mail in early March.
THURSDAY
Registration/informationon table staffed from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM
7:30‐8:30 AM: Continental breakfast (Fountain Ballroom III and IV)
8:45 AM: Meet in hotel lobby for Caltech and HunDngton visits
9 AM ‐ noon: New PI Session (by invitaDon), Fountain Ballroom (I and II)
Conference begins at noon with opening remarks.
noon‐ 1:00 PM: Lunch (Fountain Ballroom III and IV)
1:15 ‐ 2:30 PM: One‐minute madness
2:30 ‐ 3:30 PM: PI Panel: “The Challenge of Research at an REU Site”
(Pamela Abshire, Richard Hughey, Nicholas Kraft, Aaron Striegel)
3:30 ‐ 4:00 PM: Social break
4:00 ‐ 5:00 PM: Breakout session 1 (see p. 11 for locaDons)
5:00 ‐ 5:30 PM: Breakout summaries
6:00 ‐ 7:30 PM: Dinner at hotel (Fountain Ballroom III and IV)
FRIDAY
7:30 ‐ 8:30 AM: Breakfast (Fountain Ballroom III and IV)
8:30 ‐ 9:30 AM: Coordinating with NSF Program Officers
9:30 ‐10:30 AM: Assessment and Tools (Audrey Rorrer)
10 ‐ 10:45 AM: Social break
10:45 ‐ noon: “Why Student Mentoring is Irresistible and How to Make
its Lessons Stick”: Keynote by Prof. Maja Mataric, USC (see p. 9)
noon ‐ 1:00 PM: Lunch (Fountain Ballroom III and IV)
1:15 ‐ 2:15 PM: “The Impact of REUs on Enhancing Diversity”
(Angela Gallegos, Ed Mosteig, David Uminsky, Dagan Karp, see p. 10)
2:15 ‐ 3:15 PM: Breakout session 2 (see p. 11 for locations)
3:15 ‐ 3:45 PM: Social break
3:45 ‐ 4:15 PM: Breakout summaries
4:15 ‐ 5:00 PM: Preparing a successful renewal proposal (H. Taylor and J. Peckham)
5:00 ‐ 5:15 PM: Conclusions, looking to next year
6 PM: Meet in hotel lobby to walk to restaurant (or meet us there!)
6:30 PM: Dinner at Il Fornaio (24 West Union Ave.)
We will have a special keynote talk by Professor Maja Mataric of USC on Friday. Professor Mataric works in the area of assistive robotics and her work has received international attention (including a full article in a recent issue of the New Yorker!). Professor Mataric will discuss her research and the involvement of undergraduates in this work. We will also have a guest panel of mathematicians with substantial experience in REU sites that have been particularly successful in mentoring students from traditionally underrepresented groups.
1-Minute Madness!
In lieu of a poster session, this year we will have a "1-minute madness" session where each PI will be asked to speak for one minute about their REU site. After you register, you will receive an e-mail with a powerpoint template slide that you should fill out and send back to us (the email address will be provided). This slide will contain your picture, the name and location of your site, the research themes of your site, etc. Your slide will be projected when you get up and talk about your site for a minute on Thursday and the slides will be included in the conference booklet.
Visitors (If You're Not the Representative PI From Your Site)
If you are the second representative from your REU site, you are welcome to attend but our grant cannot cover your expenses. You should still register using our registration system. The registration system has a link to the Westin room room reservation site for our conference or you can go there directly from here. Either way, you will find yourself at the Westin page for our meeting, with the $149/night negotiated room rate.
You will also need to pay the registration fee of $320 which covers meals and refreshments all day Thursday and Friday (including the Friday evening dinner at Il Fornaio). Finally, if you wish to participate in the excursions on Thursday morning, there is a fee to cover our transportation costs (and admission to the Huntington Gardens). Those fees are listed on the registration website. After you register, we will send you an invoice to remit payment.
The standard guest rooms at the Westin have one king-size bed. If you wish to make arrangements for a larger or different kind of room, you may do so directly with the hotel. We will pay the negotiated rate of $149/night for the three nights (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday). You are welcome to reserve a more expensive room and pay the difference between our rate and yours.
Exchanging ideas about what do with family members...
If you are planning to bring family members with you, you might want to compare notes with others who plan do the the same thing. We've set up an editable site where you can do just that. The URL is http://cise-reu-with-family.jottit.com. The password was sent to you when this site was announced. If you didn't get it, please write to pimeeting@cs.hmc.edu to request it.