REU Site: Summer Research Projects in Contemporary Physics for Women and Minorities

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The University of Chicago Department of Physics administers a Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) site project targeted especially towards encouraging members of under-represented minority groups and women to pursue careers in physics. Applications are solicited nationally from undergraduate programs in physics and engineering with some emphasis on historically black colleges and traditional women's colleges. The core of the program for each student participant is a 10-week summer research project under supervision of an individual faculty member. Each student is given a specific, well-defined research task that can be completed within the 10-week duration of the program. Typical projects are distributed among the areas of high-energy, cosmic-ray and space physics, astronomy and astrophysics, general relativity, condensed-matter physics, non-linear and non-equilibrium phenomena, optics and solar energy, biophysics and electron and ion microscopy. These research experiences are complemented by field trips to Argonne and Fermi Accelerator Laboratories. In addition, each summer, a series of lectures is presented by faculty to provide an overview of some of the most important research topics currently pursued in physics. By having pre-college science teachers participate in our lecture series, we believe we can broaden our scope and introduce some of the ideas of cutting-edge research into high-school science classrooms. Each of the students submits a written report describing her or his research and makes a formal oral presentation during the last two weeks of the program. The Physics REU provides the students with an exposure to the breadth and unity of physics. In addition it provides the activities that bring all of the REU students into contact with one another to create the peer interactions among students that increase the program's excitement and vitality. We are enhancing the program by taking advantage of the excellent rapport we have observed between the REU participants and our graduate students. This will increase the feedback that we can get about the program as well as provide increased mentoring by role models close in age to the undergraduates.