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The 2000 SCEC Summer Internship program
is underway, with ten undergraduate students working with SCEC
scientists and outreach staff on an interesting variety of projects.
The Summer
Undergraduate Research Internship Program provides opportunities
for undergraduate students to work alongside SCEC scientists
who are working on some aspect of earthquake-related science.
Visit the 2000
SCEC Summer Interns page for information about this summers
interns.
On June 23rd, SCEC and the Pacific
Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), co-hosted
a Communications Workshop led by Dr. Joseph Foraker, who teaches
a communications class to engineering students at UC Irvine.
Nineteen students attended the five-hour class. Topics included
the technical writing process (planning, research, writing, reviewing,
and editing), techniques in technical writing (document design,
graphics, and documentation), and forms of technical writing
and presentations (reports, oral presentations, Microsoft Word
and Powerpoint).
After the joint SCEC/PEER workshop concluded,
the SCEC interns met for an Orientation to the program with Intern
Coordinator Mark Benthien, SCEC's Associate Director for Outreach.
Due dates for rough drafts of their final report were discussed,
as well as plans for the mid-summer Intern Colloquium and field
trip, and the SCEC Annual Meeting in September.
SCEC Interns were asked to write brief
comments about what they learned during the communication workshop,
and about how their projects are progressing. Their responses
are listed here:
Nancy Natek
I would like to thank SCEC again for funding my travel to the
SCEC Communication Workshop and Orientation. The workshop was
very informative for our upcoming presentation for the SCEC Annual
Meeting and our final report. I enjoyed Professor Joseph Foraker's
presentation of the process and techniques of technical writing
and presentations. His own personal experiences in his extensive
writing career added spice and emphasis to his main points. Areas
that were of great interest to me were planning and organizing
your report, readability analysis and the various techniques
of making an animated PowerPoint presentation. It was great to
meet the other summer interns and hear about their summer projects.
I am looking forward to their status-report presentations at
the Intern Colloquium.
My summer internship working with Professor Mousumi Roy at the
University of New Mexico is going very well. We are making significant
progress on our project, 'Two-Dimensional Gravity Modeling of
the Central and Western
Transverse Ranges in the Los Angeles Region'. I am currently
learning programming and data analysis in General Mapping Tools
(GMT) software by comparing 2D topographic profiles across the
Transverse Ranges with
observed gravity. It is a great opportunity for me to gain experience
in scientific research in the field of geodynamics/geophysics.
Marie Ammerman
The Communications Workshop showed me how a professional scientific
paper is written, which is a skill that I will be able to apply
throughout my career. My internship is going well and I am learning
a great deal about the analysis of seismograms.
Kevin Mass
The Communications workshop was very informative. I learned how
to improve my speech and writing abilities in many ways. The
Powerpoint demonstration helped me prepare for my SCEC presentation.
Although, I wish the speaker would have spent some more time
explaining all the options in Microsoft Powerpoint. My internship
research is going well. I am putting the finishing touches on
the first few data locations (plotting them on the map, measuring
their distance from the fault, rotating them, etc.). Soon I will
be out on the field again to collect more data to analyze later.
That is briefly what I am doing now.
Daniel Raymond
Dr. Foraker provided insights into technical writing that will
be very valuable for both our internships and our future careers.
We learned details often overlooked in report writing which should
give us a competitive edge.
Alexandra Jordan
The communication workshop was a wonderful opportunity to meet
other interns and learn about what they are doing for the summer.
I have recently been working with the computer application HAZUS.
Not only have I been able to work with Mark Benthien and Jill
Andrews but on the third day of my internship we flew to the
Bay Area to attend a HAZUS workshop. It was a wonderful experience
to actually be able to participate in technical conversations
with other professionals working with HAZUS.
Teresa Baker
I really like the list of common ways to cut down words. I also
liked seeing some completed and well done papers. I feel like
the workshop gave me something to work from in writing the report.
Also, as the presenter said, I have become very conscious of
the errors in papers now, particularly in rereading my proposal.
The presenter was very well prepared and I think that for the
time available there was as much interaction as possible. It
might have been nice to bring some work of our own though; that
would also allow us to be
"mentally prepared" for the workshop.
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