REU Site: Wyoming Astronomy

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This award will support the renewal of a 10-week research experience program for eight undergraduate students per year at the University of Wyoming. A unique aspect of this program is that students work together as a team on a single research project with each student assigned separate sub-projects within the whole. The research projects and faculty leads rotate each year, with (1) speckle imaging of exoplanet candidates from TESS, (2) Hb reverberation mapping of quasars, and (3) searches for Earth-like planets using ultra-high precision radial velocity measurements of nearby stars being slated for the following three summers. The students will carry out this research through their exclusive access to UWyo’s 2.3 m telescope (70-nights) to gain a truly immersive experience in observational astrophysics, and they will receive additional training to prepare them for graduate school and careers in STEM fields. They will also be given the opportunity to participate in science outreach through AstroCamp, a 10-day science camp for rising 6th-8th graders during the summer. This project is jointly funded by OMA and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).Recruitment of participants will focus on freshmen and sophomore students from liberal arts colleges, two-year colleges, and public institutions offering little to no research opportunities. The project will continue to collaborate with the Cal-Bridge Summer program to target minority students for recruitment. Past success has increased the participation of these minorities to over 22% in the past six years. The recruitment techniques that have achieved this balance will be continued in the current project.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.