Leveraging Nsf-Crest Center Funding To Support Undergraduate Research At Multiple Hispanic Serving/Minority Institutions

The NSF-CREST Center for Advanced, Functional Materials, CAFM, at California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB) has greatly increased the number of quality research opportunities for undergraduates from multiple institutions, at multiple sites. At the same time, this project promotes research advancement in materials science well beyond what was pursued before CAFM. In this chapter we overview how we used the new CAFM Center and CREST funds to maximize opportunities for undergraduate research (UR), in a new interdisciplinary area, including evaluation of the UR experiences. The program builds on other successful projects by various members of the team, including early research experiences funded by the NSF PRISM program, more focused research funded previously by DoD and NASA, and the growing impact of our campus Office of Student Research.