Holbrook, a professor of forestry at Harvard, has been a mentor since 1996. She leads projects with REU students and her doctorate or graduate students.

“I choose students who will be an asset to the project and who show a lot of initiative. [Levye] hadn’t done any research, but she worked in theater on the set and lighting crew. That’s an example where you think on your feet,” Holbrook says.

Even students outside of Harvard connect with mentors early on. Relena Ribbons, who attended the program in 2008, is a 2010 graduate of Wellesley College. Her project involved studying the effects of insect infestation on hemlock forests in Connecticut.

“After I decided to apply I was already in contact with my advisor, [David A. Orwig]. I was already discussing his research. Making that contact was important,” Ribbons says.

The other researchers are also approachable for students, according to those involved with the program. Foster is a frequent presence as a mentor and an evening lecturer, and he also takes the students on a hike or a field trip every summer.

The REU program includes other events outside of research such as weekly seminars and workshops. Living in two houses throughout the summer, the students bond with each other on weeknights and weekends.

“I was kind of expecting to go into the program and be spending a lot of time by myself working on my project, but I had a lot of time to interact with the other students,” Ribbons says.

Although some projects, like Ribbon’s, take place away from the Harvard Forest, all students live there. Each year, students organize trips off-site such as hiking in the White Mountains.

“It’s like a summer camp for almost-grown-ups,” says David Diaz ’06, who first participated in the program in 2003.

ACADEMIC AWAKENINGS

The REU is open to all undergraduates and recently-graduated students. Participants come from a wide range of concentrations.

Diaz, at the time a history concentrator, was looking for a summer opportunity close to Boston and learned about Harvard Forest through an e-mail on his House list. He contacted Aaron M. Ellison, a senior research fellow in ecology at Harvard Forest, and learned about a project that involved identifying and counting ants.

“Few students have experience doing that at college,” Diaz says. “I’d always been good at science and math, but I never really considered it a career or a study option.”

Diaz’s experience motivated him to create a special concentration of environmental history. Now he works as a forest carbon associate at Ecosystem Marketplace, an environmental non-profit in Washington, D.C.

Although Ribbons was involved in research prior to the program, the REU pushed her to attend graduate school. Ribbons is pursuing a Master of Science in forest resources at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.