Session J5: The U.S. Particle Accelerator School

Overview of USPAS and its role in educating the next generation of accelerator scientists and engineers

Accelerators are essential engines of discovery in fundamental physics, biology, and chemistry. Particle beam based instruments in medicine, industry and national security constitute a multi-billion dollar per year industry. More than 55,000 peer-reviewed papers having accelerator as a keyword are available on the Web. Yet only a handful of universities offer any formal training in accelerator science. Several reasons can be cited: 1) The science and technology of particle beams and other non-neutral plasmas cuts across traditional academic disciplines. 2) Electrical engineering departments have evolved toward micro- and nano-technology and computing science. 3) Nuclear engineering departments have atrophied at many major universities. 4) With few exceptions, interest at individual universities is not extensive enough to support a strong faculty line. The United States Particle Accelerator School (USPAS) is National Graduate Educational Program that has developed a highly successful educational paradigm that, over the past twenty-years, has granted more university credit in accelerator / beam science and technology than any university in the world. Governed and supported by a consortium of nine DOE laboratories and two NSF university laboratories, USPAS offers a responsive and balanced curriculum of science, engineering, computational and hands-on courses. Sessions are held twice annually, hosted by major US research universities that approve course credit, certify the USPAS faculty, and grant course credit. The USPAS paradigm is readily extensible to other rapidly developing, cross-disciplinary research areas such as high energy density physics.   

USPAS from a student's perspective: learning about accelerator physics.

Overall, graduate education in the US is widely considered to be of the highest quality with the students from around the world entering our Universities. The difference between the US and European (in particularly, Russian) graduate educations is the availability of scholarly part in the US graduate programs. It consists of a number of classes (often mandatory) which help students to master their particular specialty and compensate for the lack of special classes during undergraduate years mostly overloaded with general studies. However, accelerator physics specialty has somehow historically become an exclusion with very few Universities offering classes in accelerators. The USPAS has became an essential part of my graduate education in accelerator physics, compensated for the lack of coursework at MIT, and greatly expedited my progress in thesis research.   

The USPAS from the perspective of the instructor

The evolution of the U.S. Particle Accelerator School over the past two decades is examined from the perspective of one instructor with experience teaching graduate students, undergraduate students, accelerator professionals and other ``interested parties,'' throughout the history of the school's university credit program.