SUPPORT FOR HU CFRT SUMMER HIGH SCHOOL FUSION WORKSHOP
Nine summer fusion science research workshops for minority and female high school students were conducted at the Hampton University Center for Fusion Research and Training from 1996 to 2005. Each workshop was of the duration of eight weeks. In all 35 high school students were mentored. The students presented 28 contributed papers at the annual meetings of the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics. These contributed papers were very well received by the plasma physics and fusion science research community. The students won a number of prestigious local, state, and national honors, awards, prizes, and scholarships. The notable among these are the two regional finalist positions in the 1999 Siemens-Westinghouse Science and Technology Competitions; 1st Place U.S. Army Award, 2006; 1st Place U.S. Naval Science Award, 2006; Yale Science and Engineering Association Best 11th Grade Project, 2006; Society of Physics Students Book Award, 2006; APS Corporate Minority Scholarship and others. This workshop program conducted by the HU CFRT has been an exemplary success, and served the minority and female students exceptionally fruitfully. The Summer High School Fusion Science Workshop is an immensely successful outreach activity conducted by the HU CFRT. In this workshop, we train, motivate, and provide high quality research experiences to young and talented high school scholars with emphasis on under-represented minorities and female students in fusion science and related areas. The purpose of this workshop is to expose minority and female students to the excitement of research in science at an early stage in their academic lives. It is our hope that this may lead the high school students to pursue higher education and careers in physical sciences, mathematics, and perhaps in fusion science. To our knowledge, this workshop is the first and only one to date, of fusion science for under-represented minorities and female high school students at an HBCU. The faculty researchers in the HU CFRT mentor the students during summers. Mentors spend a considerable amount of time and efforts in training, teaching, guiding and supervising research projects. The HU CFRT has so far conducted nine workshops during the summers of 1996-2000 and 2002-2005. The first workshop was conducted in summer 1996. Students for the workshop are chosen from a national pool of exceptionally talented high school rising seniors/juniors. To our knowledge, most of these students have gone on to prestigious universities such as Duke University, John Hopkins University, CalTech, UCLA, Hampton University, etc. after completing their high school. For instance, Tiffany Fisher, participant of the 1996 summer workshop completed her BS in Mathematics at Hampton University in May 2001. She then went on to Wake Forest University at Winston-Salem, North Carolina to pursue graduate studies. Anshul Haldipur, participant of the 1999 summer workshop, began his undergraduate studies at Duke University in 2000. Christina Nguyen and Ilissa Martinez, participants of the 2000 summer workshop, are pursuing their undergraduate degrees at the UCLA and Florida State University respectively. The organizing committee of the APS DPP annual meeting invited Dr. Punjabi to deliver an invited talk on training the next generation of fusion scientists and engineers at the 2005 APS DPP meeting in Denver, CO. The organizing committee distributed a special flier with the Bulletin to highlight this invited talk and another talk on education as well the expo. This has given wide publicity and recognition to our workshops and Hampton University. Prof. Punjabi's talk: 'LI2 2: Training the next generation of fusion scientists and engineers: summer high school fusion science workshop, Bull. Amer. Phys. Soc. 50, 221 (2005)' was very well-received. He talked about HU education and outreach initiative and the HU CFRT Summer High School Workshop. The audience had a considerable number of questions about our workshops and the High School to PhD Pipeline in fusion science. Professor William Mathews of University of Delaware offered to give the HU Team MHD codes to use, and Professor Birdsall of University of California, Berkeley, plasma theory and simulation group, offered to give the team simple simulation codes to use. We are very happy and proud and very gratified by this, and we thank the US DOE OFES, Dr. Sam Barish and Dr. Michael Crisp for their support and encouragement.
- Research Organization:
- Hampton Univ., Hampton, VA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-02ER54673
- OSTI ID:
- 971620
- Report Number(s):
- DE-FG02-02ER54673; TRN: US1001475
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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