RESEARCH EXPERIENCES FOR UNDERGRADUATES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA–LINCOLN
UNL's research environment will contribute largely to the fulfillment of the project goals. UNL, the flagship of the University of Nebraska system, is the state's primary intellectual center, providing leadership across Nebraska through quality education and the generation of new knowledge. UNL offers a vast number of resources to enhance training and education including state-of-the-art computer facilities, extensive libraries, and excellent research laboratories with supporting researchers on the cutting edge of their fields. UNL enrolls approximately 22,500 students, which includes 3,979 graduate and professional students.
The UNL Department of Psychology has over a 110 year history of offering graduate and undergraduate courses in basic and applied psychology. Currently, 26 faculty offer training in Law and Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Biopsychology, Social and Personality Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Cognitive Psychology to more than 700 undergraduate majors and 100 graduate students. The Department is dedicated to teaching and research at all levels of education. The research and academic interests of the faculty traverse the usual areas in psychology; however, the department is renowned for its joint programs in Law and Psychology, offered in conjunction with the University of Nebraska Law College. The Department of Psychology houses six law and psychology research laboratories and field stations, three of which have been funded in part with National Science Foundation awards to Dr. Richard Wiener and Dr. Brian Bornstein.
In addition to each faculty member's lab facilities, several classrooms are reserved each semester for use as additional laboratory space. These rooms will be available to REU students for completion of team-based projects as well as their own independent studies. REU students will also have free and unlimited access to all the computer labs on the UNL campus. Each computer is networked directly to the Internet and provides quick and easy access to databases, books, and journals within the University of Nebraska system. All computers are also fully loaded with software for word processing, creating and uploading spreadsheets, and analyzing data (SPSS, among other programs). Throughout the academic year and summer term, the department has an active subject pool of students (i.e., volunteer research participants) enrolled in introductory psychology courses and some other undergraduate classes. The pool is comprised of approximately 2,000 students for the academic year (1,000 for each of Fall and Spring semesters), and 200 for the summer term (100 in each of two summer sessions). An advanced doctoral student supervised by a faculty member manages the pool, which is maintained with online (i.e., a UNL website) sign-up and credit reporting during the Fall and Spring semesters.
