Mentoring undergraduates in computer vision research

The future of our society will be shaped by the young and talented minds go ing through our colleges and universities today. During the last 14 years r oughly 130 undergraduate students from several institutions have participat ed in our research experiences for undergraduates (REU) program funded by t he National Science Foundation (NSF). A large fraction of our students have been able to prepare a paper for submission to a conference, have the pape r accepted, and then attend the conference to present the paper. Several pa rticipants have even accomplished enough substantial research to result in journal publications. Many past participants are now pursuing graduate stud ies at various institutions. In this paper, the REU model is described in d etail; some examples of student success are discussed; and some observation s are summarized.