Session F14: Integration of Research and Teaching Excellence: Cottrell Scholars

From Particle Physics to Education: The Role of Tinkering

The love of tinkering is perhaps the single most universal trait among scientists. From designing an experiment to building a computer application to solving a differential equation, the cycle of "observe - explain - test - revise'' is at the root of the scientific creative process. Driven by the love of tinkering, we have developed a small low-cost wireless lab system with the goal of putting real scientific instrumentation in the hands of anyone with a desire to innovate and explore. I will describe how this came about and how it has changed our view of introductory physics labs at the University of Illinois.   

Excellence and Diversity in Physics, and the Quest for Other Worlds

A major concern for American competitiveness today is the full engagement of US citizens in the STEM enterprise. Of particular concern is the ongoing under-representation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans, who comprise 35\% of the US college-age population but only 2\% of physical science PhDs awarded in the US. Since 2004, with initial funding from an NSF CAREER grant and then from a Research Corp Cottrell Scholar award, the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-PhD Bridge Program has attracted 98 students, 79 of them under-represented minorities, 50\% of them women, and with a PhD retention rate of 90\%. Fisk has become the top producer of Black U.S. recipients of the master's degree in physics, and Vanderbilt has become the top research university to award the PhD to under-represented minorities in physics, astronomy, and materials science. Among the many ``firsts" of the program are: the first member of the Sioux Nation to earn an advanced physics degree, the first Native Hawaiian woman to receive the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the first African American to receive NASA's top Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the first African American woman to publish an astronomy paper as first author in the prestigious journal Nature. Indeed, this latter example represents the groundbreaking discovery that the sizes and ages of stars---and therefore the sizes and ages and compositions of the planets that orbit those stars---can be measured directly and accurately via the ``flicker" of the stars' light. This discovery has transformed the ability of astronomers to understand the physical nature of the exoplanets that are now being found by the thousands around distant stars.   

Undergraduate research: A win-win for both students and faculty

Undergraduate students benefit significantly from opportunities to do research with faculty, both at predominately undergraduate institutions (PUIs) and also at major Research I universities. If done well, these research opportunities can also benefit the faculty mentor, especially at PUIs with heavy teaching loads. In fact, the experience works best for the student if it also benefits the faculty. In this talk, I will discuss my experiences working with undergraduate research students, some of whom have been as productive as advanced graduate students. I will discuss situations where things have worked very well for everyone concerned, as well as some mistakes that I made in the past that resulted in bad research experiences. This discussion will be provided in the context of an experimental program in nonlinear dynamics, a field that is well-suited to participation by undergraduates.   

Untypical Undergraduate Research: Player Motion Analysis in Sports

There is significant concern about the degree of attrition in STEM disciplines from the start of K-12 through to the end of higher education, and the analysis of the `leaky pipeline' from the various institutions has identified a critical decline - which may be as high as 60 percent - between the fraction of students who identify as having an interest in a science or engineering major at the start of college/university, and the fraction of students who ultimately graduate with a STEM degree. It has been shown that this decline is even more dramatic for women and underrepresented minorities (Blickenstaff 2005, Metcalf 2010). One intervention which has been proven to be effective for retention of potential STEM students is early research experience, particularly if it facilitates the students' integration into a STEM learning community (Graham et al. 2013, Toven-Lindsey et al. 2015). In other words, to retain students in STEM majors, we would like to encourage them to `think of themselves as scientists', and simultaneously promote supportive peer networks. The University of Denver (DU) already has a strong undergraduate research program. However, while the current program provides valuable training for many students, it likely comes too late to be effective for student retention in STEM, because it primarily serves older students who have already finished the basic coursework in their discipline; within physics, we know that the introductory physics courses already serve as gatekeeper courses that cause many gifted but `non-typical' students to lose interest in pursuing a STEM major (Tobias 1990). To address this issue, my lab is developing a small research spinoff program in which we apply spatiotemporal motion analysis to the motion trajectories of players in sports, using video recordings of DU Pioneer hockey games. This project aims to fulfill a dual purpose: The research is framed in a way that we think is attractive and accessible for beginning students who have not yet finished the basic physics course sequence, and we hope to use it to attract untypical and retain undecided students in physics. Secondly, since mathematical techniques for trajectory analysis are independent of scale, we hope to harness the creativity and analytical intuition of undergraduates to simultaneously benefit our core biophysical research program.