Session H4: Undergraduate Education in Nuclear Physics

Conference Experience for Undergraduates in the Division of Nuclear Physics - 10 Years Running

The Conference Experience for Undergraduates (CEU), held annually in the APS Division of Nuclear Physics since 1998, has become a valuable addition to the fall DNP meetings. Since its inception 10 years ago, approximately 730 undergraduate students from over 60 colleges and universities from around the country (and a few from abroad) have participated. The goal of the program is to provide students who have conducted undergraduate research in nuclear science a ``capstone'' conference experience, with the goal toward strengthening retention of talented students in the field. In addition to the main conference, the CEU includes extra activities for the students, including the main research poster session, two undergraduate nuclear physics seminars, and a graduate school information session. CEU application materials are considered by an independent review committee, and travel and lodging grants are awarded based on project merit. Financial support is provided by the NSF, DOE, and DNP. At the recent 10$^{th}$ anniversary CEU, a mini-symposium was organized as part of the DNP conference, at which former CEU students (now graduate students, post-docs, and professors) had opportunity to talk about their research and the influence that undergraduate research and conference participation had on their career paths. Survey and anecdotal data indicating benefits of CEU participation, as well as initial results from career path tracking will be presented.   

Research in an Undergraduate Physics Department

In the 1970's, a decision was made at Tennessee Technological University to emphasize nuclear physics as a research specialty in the department. Shortly thereafter, two of the department's faculty began to include undergraduates in their experimental work, and such inclusion became a point of emphasis in the department. By the early 1990's the department had nine faculty members, each with a background in nuclear physics. Six faculty had external funding from DOE, and including undergraduates in the research process was an important component in most of those grants. Today four of seven faculty are active in nuclear physics, and most of our majors (admittedly a small number) will have a summer research experience either through one of our own programs or through an REU program elsewhere before they graduate. I will discuss both positive and negative aspects of this choice to concentrate on a single subfield and offer my views on what it has meant for research in our department, for our students during their undergraduate years, and for future manpower in the field of nuclear physics.   

U.S. Workforce and Educational Facilities' Readiness to Meet the Future Challenges of Nuclear Energy

Using nuclear energy to generate electricity continues to be a topic of considerable debate. Currently, 20{\%} of the electricity in the U.S. comes from its fleet of 104 commercial nuclear reactors, and they annually displace on the order of one hundred million metric tons of carbon emissions. These reactors currently account for 70{\%} of the non-carbon emitting electricity production in the United States. Due to the recent interest by the Federal government and others in expanding the nuclear energy option, the American Physical Society's Panel on Public Affairs sponsored a study of the U.S. workforce and educational facilities' readiness for three scenarios out to the year 2050. They range from maintaining the current number of nuclear reactors, although some may be retired and replaced by new ones; significantly increasing the number of reactors, to perhaps as high as 200 or more; up to significantly increasing the number of reactors while closing the fuel cycle by reprocessing and recycling spent fuel. This talk reports on the results of that study.