The CA-REU will include both academic enrichment activities and social and cultural enrichment activities.
Academic Enrichment Activities – Research Projects: Each project will take a team-based approach where students will be working with another student as well as being mentored by the research mentors. Team members will meet weekly to discuss the ongoing activities of the research project.
Team Project 1: Temporal and Geospatial Trends in Crime & Terror
~ Research Mentors: Matthew Phillips (CJUS) and Shannon Reid (CJUS).
~ Goal: Analyze and map the temporal and geospatial correlations of terrorism, gang activity, and transnational organized crime around the globe.
~ CA-REU Students’ Role: Gather data from multiple sources and combine into a single database. Perform preliminary correlational analyses to understand the interplay of terrorism, gang activity, and transnational organized crime, and determine which patterns warrant more sophisticated temporal and spatial analyses. Students will be involved in the development and testing of the crime-terror data visualization application. Students will also develop a poster presentation and assist in developing a manuscript to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.
Team Project 2: Exploring International Human Trafficking Through Social Media
~ Research Mentors: Wenwen Dou (SIS), Alireza Karduni (SIS) and Matthew Phillips (CJUS)
~ Goal: Analyze the spatial and temporal dimensions of international human trafficking using social media, particularly Twitter.
~ CA-REU Students’ Role: The students will be responsible for curating a dictionary of human trafficking related jargon and code words, and for working with research mentors in gathering the data from Twitter, developing visualizations of the data, and conducting text analytics. The students will work with research mentors to prepare a manuscript for peer-reviewed publication, and will present their work at the final poster presentation.
Team Project 3: Spatio-Temporal Visual Analysis of Crime and Victimization Data
~Research Mentors: Kalpathi Subramanian (CS), Michael Turner (CJUS), Lyn Exum (CJUS)
~ Goal: The goal of this project is to expose students to various tools that can be used to visualize cross-sectional and longitudinal crime and victimization data.
~ CA-REU Students’ Role: The student team (ideally spanning computer science and criminal justice) will be trained on the various strengths and weaknesses of different sources of crime and victimization data. Students will be responsible for preparing, cleansing and filtering data, prior to use by visualization tools. An interactive visual analytic system will be developed that will display spatial and temporal trends in crime and victimization. The system will also permit querying capabilities, that make it convenient to test crime-related questions and hypotheses. The students will prepare and poster and manuscript for peer-reviewed publication.
Team Project 4: Spatially Analyzing and Preventing Crime on Campus
~Research Mentors: Jean-Claude Thill (GEOG), Shannon Reid (CJUS) and Beth Bjerregaard (CJUS)
~ Goal: Identify larceny hot spots on campus and the factors associated with these areas. Suggest preventative measures that potential victims and members of the campus community can take to reduce these offenses.
~ CA-REU Students’ Role: Organize data in a way that facilitates import into Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and data management software, mapping larceny incidents utilizing GIS mapping techniques, and correlating factors associated with offenses utilizing the statistical software. Students will gain close familiarity with the elements of data coding, storage, retrieval, and analysis. Students will suggest policy implications designed to reduce criminal incidents. Students will also develop a poster presentation and assist in developing a manuscript to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.
Social & Cultural Enrichment Activities:
These activities will include team building activities, a CA-REU sponsored cookout, field trips to local agencies/companies involved in crime analytics, etc.
