Astrophysics Partners Reaching Across the State of Colorado

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A new research and education partnership in astronomy will be developed between the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder and Fort Lewis College, a designated Native American-serving college located in Durango, Colorado. The primary goal of this partnership is to open pathways to astronomy professions for Native American students. Over the course of three years, this program will enable a total of nine Fort Lewis College undergraduates to develop skills in astrophysics research, by providing 10-week summer research internships at the CU Boulder astrophysics department and the NSF’s National Solar Observatory, which is located on CU’s campus. In order to expand the students’ professional and social community, the new summer program will plug into several well-established programs on campus. The program will provide workshops, field trips, near-peer mentoring from graduate students of color, conversations with CU’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, poster presentation opportunities at national conferences, and a celestial reunion at an Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site at Chimney Rock National Monument.The students participating in this program will learn about spectroscopy, Python coding, and telescopes, as well as science communication, writing an abstract, and creating a scientific poster. Their summer research projects will cover a wide range of astrophysics, including the origin of metals in white dwarfs, the properties of exoplanet atmospheres, understanding magnetic fibrils on the Sun, and the effect of different supermassive black hole mass measurements on gravitational wave signals. The students will present their scientific results in posters at a CU research symposium, a Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science meeting, and an American Astronomical Society meeting. Through these research experiences, as well as workshops on applying to graduate school and field trips to astronomy-related workplaces, the undergraduates will be well poised for entry into graduate school or other astronomy career paths. This award advances the goals of the Windows on the Universe Big Idea.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.