Information for Students | Program
Description and Requirements | Reporting Requirements | Progress
Reports | Abstract | Final Report
All students are required to complete a final paper. Direct questions
to sfp@caltech.edu or call 626.395.2885.
Please read all instructions below!
This message is directed to students conducting research projects
at JPL this summer in the following NASA programs: Space Grant, USRP, PGGURP,
and Develop. One of the local requirements of the JPL Education Office
is that each student will, at the end of the summer, submit a written report
on his or her project. Before these reports can be distributed outside
of JPL they must pass through the document/export-compliance review process.
The purpose of this message is to discuss requirements and steps for the submittal
process, and to present some guidelines for the reports. Since the students’ mentors
are intimately involved in advising students on the reports and in entering
the reports into the new unlimited release system (URS), they are copied on
this message as well.
REPORT SUBMITTAL REQUIREMENTS AND PROCESS
1) Each student in one of the NASA programs listed above
must submit to the mentor a project report approved by the mentor on or before
the day of departure.
2) Each student must also send an electronic version of their project report
to their JPL program manager:
Space Grant: Linda Rodgers, linda.l.rodgers@jpl.nasa.gov
USRP, Space Grant, Develop: Petra Kneissl-Milanian, petra.kneissl-milanian@jpl.nasa.gov
3) Upon receipt of the project report, the Mentor or Supervisor (M/S)
should upload the report into the Unlimited Release System (URS) for document/export
compliance review. Further instructions on this process will be forthcoming.
4) When word is received that the report has been cleared for external
release, the M/S should so inform the student author.
5) After the report has been cleared for release, and not before, the
student author may distribute it to the program sponsor, university faculty,
peers, or others.
6) Coordinators of the programs listed above will inform the designated
contacts of the program sponsors when a project report has not been received
within five working days of the student’s departure day.
PROJECT REPORT VS FINAL REPORT
“Project report” in this message is defined as a
written paper that documents the objectives, activities, and outcomes of the
student’s research project. One purpose of this report, important
to the program coordinator and the program sponsor, is to provide evidence
that money (federal or other) spent on the student stipend and other expenses
led to a result. For that reason, turning in a project report on time
before departure is a firm requirement of the JPL Education Office. Another
purpose, important to the student as well as to the coordinators and sponsors
of the research, is to enable the student to experience the challenges of communicating
the outcome of his or her efforts to a community of technical peers.
The required project report may or not be a “final report” for
the project. Toward the end of the research period, the student is often
preoccupied with the tasks of winding up the data gathering, making travel
arrangements, and in other ways preparing to go back home or to school. There
may not be time for careful analysis and assimilation of the data and thoughtful
consideration of what has been learned, in the larger context of what is already
known, to make the project report, as defined here, a satisfactory final report. In
fact, it is hoped and expected that, for many projects, the mentor and student
will want to write a more detailed and comprehensive report suitable for submittal
to a professional society journal or for a presentation at a professional meeting. The
results of many summer student projects often do end up being reported in peer-reviewed
publications. For such a paper, the mentor will use the URS to obtain
document review and release as for the project paper.
PROJECT REPORT GUIDELINES
There are suggestions but no firm content or format requirements
for your project reports, unless you have such requirements from your program
sponsor and/or from your mentor. All reports, science or engineering or technology
development, should share some common elements, not necessarily in the following
order:
1) Introduction: Briefly, what is this report about?
2) Background: What prior knowledge and experience motivated the
project, and what
was
a successful project expected to add to what is already known?
3) Objectives: What specifically did the project
aim to accomplish?
4) Approach: What steps were taken to reach
the objectives?
5) Results: What
were the findings or results of the project?
6) Discussion: How do the outcomes of the project
compare with what was expected?
7) Conclusions: In summary, what was learned from the project,
how does the outcome
contribute
to what was known at the beginning, and what are possible
next
steps?
8) Acknowledgments
9) Bibliography
As to the length of your report, it should be long enough
to tell the story of what you did, and no longer. If your report comes
out to be five to ten pages, you are probably in the right ball park. If
it turns out to be shorter, make sure nothing important is left out. If
longer, are you including things that would be better addressed in a final
paper or report?
SUBMISSIONS TO CURJ
Students may submit any paper that follows the SFP final report guidelines
to the Caltech Undergraduate Research Journal (CURJ). Accepted articles
will require the addition of subtitles and 'Further Reading' and the removal
of the abstract, 'References', 'Methods', and 'Appendices'. CURJ editors
will work with authors to prepare their articles for publication.
A publication release signed by the head of the laboratory
(not a graduate student or postdoc) will also be required. This document is legally
binding. You and your advisor are advised to consult with the appropriate journals
and must resolve any copyright issues before submission. Once your paper is accepted,
it cannot be withdrawn.
