California State University Undergraduate Research Experiences (CSUURE) in Astronomy

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Dr. Eric Sandquist (San Diego State University, SDSU) and collaborators will continue a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site at San Diego State University. Mentors for the program will be drawn from SDSU, other California State University (CSU) campuses, and the University of Kansas. The scientific focus of the program is observational astronomy, specifically photometry (brightness measurements) of stars and galaxies. The proposed student projects fall within several important areas at the foundations of astronomy: supernovae and the distance scale, stellar corpses, eclipsing binary stars, open and globular star clusters, extrasolar planets, and dwarf galaxies. Large blocks of observing time are available to the program on Mount Laguna telescopes.The SDSU REU program will provide research experiences for students without access to active astronomy faculty, facilitate student training and research for research faculty at other campuses, and encourage research at campuses that do not grant Ph.D. degrees (none of the physics or astronomy departments in this program grant doctoral degrees) and that serve disproportionately large populations of students from ethnic groups that are underrepresented in the physical sciences (40% at SDSU and 55% in the CSU system as a whole). Planned recruitment from community colleges under this renewed program will reach thousands of additional students with little access to research opportunities.This site is co-funded by the Division of Astronomical Sciences and the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Office of Multidisciplinary Activities.