The SCIPP Education and Public Outreach (EPO) program has two primary goals:

• Increase the number of well-qualified college students in science,
• Heighten the appreciation and understanding of science in the general population.

The EPO mission is fulfilled by SCIPP in a variety of ways, and the most intense, demanding and structured outreach activities in the institute are:

• Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) with emphasis on groups under-represented in physics
• Research Experience for Teachers (RET) for science teachers in local schools.

Both programs are 8-9 week long summer research programs hosted concurrently in the SCIPP and Physics laboratories on the University of California Santa Cruz Campus.

The SCIPP REU program started in 1994. It is an NSF funded program, which brings undergraduates from groups under-represented in science to the UCSC campus for a summer of full immersion into our research activities. In 1998, SCIPP implemented the RET program for local science teachers, with funding from US-ATLAS and UC Santa Cruz. It was patterned after our successful REU program, and we integrated three teachers full-time for eight weeks into the ongoing research projects in our laboratories, pairing them up with undergraduates from the REU program and our staff and graduate students. In 1999 the NSF began the official RET program and ATLAS instituted a teacher outreach program ("Quarknet") very much like our own. The experience of the REU students and RET teachers is documented on our web site.

The emphasis on laboratory work treated teachers and undergraduate students identically. The participants received training in a range of laboratory skills, for example design and testing of semiconductor detectors, testing of advanced electronics, and computer simulations and analysis. They worked as part of a scientific team and improved their skills at presenting results both orally and in written reports. As part of the program, we offered weekly faculty lectures on topics in physics and astronomy, and weekly sessions on preparing and presenting activity reports. The program also incorporated visits to nearby research institutions, like IBM, Intel, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Lick Observatory.

They had weekly meetings to report on the progress of their projects. All participants were required to submit a final report and give a final presentation on their research. They received a 5-unit college credit upon their completing the program requirements.

In the 6 years of NSF funding, with support from the Dean of Natural Science on the UC Santa Cruz Campus, we have developed a program, which successfully integrates undergraduates from all over the country and largely from groups under-represented in physics into our research activities. In order to help the students with career choices after graduation, we hold special seminars on careers in industry, where we invite former students or post-docs to talk about their experiences in the work force. We also have a session on graduate school application. The students are also housed as a group on campus to foster the interaction between students with different backgrounds.

Recruiting was done nationwide, with flyers and brochures sent to more than 200 physics departments and laboratories. A list of candidates was drawn up, which incorporated our goal of recruiting groups under-represented in physics, and the promise of the candidate to participate successfully in the program. As Table 1 shows, this year we were not able to meet our goal to have about 2/3 of the students from groups under-represented in physics, most likely due to the competition from other REU sites. The projects of the students are shown in Table 2.

The 1999 RET Program

The RET program was expanded in 1999 to include six teachers from local high schools, a few of them "Partner Schools" of the UC Santa Cruz Educational Partnership Center (EPC). To reach our EPO goal, we have targeted enhancing the preparation of science teachers in order to

• Increase Science Awareness,
• Increase Science Appreciation,
• Improve Teaching Skills.

The teachers commuted to the SCIPP and Physics Dept. laboratories for 8 weeks in the summer. They were paired with SCIPP mentors and REU students in small research teams sharing the data taking and analysis.

The Teachers

IISME (Industrial Initiative for Science and Mathematics Education) assisted us with the recruiting of teachers, in addition to providing some mentoring with the participant's educational transfer plans (see below), and also funded the attendance of a teacher's workshop in New York City through NSF travel fellowships. We had a short list of about 12 high school science teachers and a few middle school teachers. The following is a list of the teachers we accepted. Criteria of selection included their plans to transfer their experience into the classroom.

Eric Muhs (Watsonville H.S.): Besides working on testing and understanding CMOS transistors, he showed great interest in visualizing science data on the computer, and consolidated his work in a CD about astrophysics. Mentor: Prof. Robert Johnson

Stuart Briber (Independence H.S., San Jose): Learned about silicon detectors, the technology of choice for GLAST, and is currently working on organizing next years RET program. Mentor: Dr. Wilko Kroeger

Lisa Aguerria (San Jose High Academy): Worked on quality control of silicon detectors and ultra-lightweight structures, essential for the GLAST mission in space. Mentor: Mr. Gwelen Paliaga

Larry Johnson (Aptos H.S.): A chemistry teacher, who worked in Sue Carter’s lab on the application of polymers as voltaic cells. Mentor: Prof. Sue Carter

Michael Burnside (San Pedro H.S.): A teacher interested in scientific lingo and bridging the language gap, he worked on testing VLSI chips and made a poster documenting the RET experience. Mentor: Dr. Tim Dubbs

Kelly Clark (G. B. Kirby Prep. H.S., Santa Cruz): Worked on computer simulations to understand how to distinguish charged cosmic rays from gamma-rays in the GLAST experiment. Is one of the lead teachers for next years Quarknet. Mentor: Dr. Jose-Angel Hernando

Educational Transfer

The teachers each completed an "Educational Transfer Plan (ETP)", describing how they will transfer their experience into the classroom. These ETP’s are posted on our RET website. In addition, the teachers spent one afternoon a week with personnel from SCIPP and the Campus to discuss outreach and how to bring science into the classroom. The teachers drew up a list of areas in which they would like increased collaboration with the UC Santa Cruz Campus. In these discussions the teachers critically evaluated their experience and our program. Their assessment was that bringing teachers into the laboratory to participate in on-going frontline research promises to reach the students in a very effective way through the excitement and increased knowledge of the teacher participants. In essence, the teachers are acting as interpreters, casting our message into the appropriate words familiar to students, and as ambassadors, given that a science teacher typically teaches up to 200 students each year.

Publications and Networking

REU students and RET teachers were considered full members of the research teams. They contributed to scientific knowledge and received credit for their work. Every year about 4 publications in refereed journals are co-authored by our RET and REU participants.

Our RET participants had the opportunity to network with their peers. Kelly Clark and Stuart Briber are part of Quarknet, a program centered at Fermilab, a large Particle Physics Laboratory near Chicago. They attended a workshop there and will continue to be part of an increasing network of teachers involved in curriculum development. Deirdre Roberts (1998), Eric Muhs and Larry Johnson (1999) each received an NSF fellowship to travel to New York City to attend a conference on RET programs organized by the Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Our Program received attention outside the US: In March 1999, Hartmut Sadrozinski was invited to a High School Teachers Workshop in Vienna (Austria) with the topic "Was ist Wirklich - What is Real -", where he lectured to 23 teachers and worked on curriculum development.

Funding

The REU/RET program received funding from a variety of sources:

NSF’s REU program which funds students and teachers at the REU sites,

Quarknet, a teachers program in Particle Physics funded by the NSF through Fermilab,

ATLAS Collaboration, which has large SCIPP participation (through Columbia U.)

The program was made possible by the commitment of the SCIPP and Physics faculty, staff and students who volunteered their efforts. They welcomed the presence of 6 RET teachers and 11 REU students, which almost doubled the number of people in the research laboratories.

Continuing EPO with local teachers

The discussions with teachers during the summer have led to the formulation of a year round EPO plan which will involve local science teachers (K-12) and SCIPP faculty, staff and students, both undergraduate and graduate. We have been selected by EPC to receive funding for part of the program.

We scheduled first to hold a "Teachers Physics Workshop". On November 13, 1999 we organized a Teacher Physics Workshop on the UC Santa Cruz Campus, bringing 50 attendees from the Campus and the teacher community together. A discussion of EPO opportunities and building of a network followed lectures by UC Santa Cruz faculty on modern science topics. Our 1999 RET participants helped to facilitate the event.

For the Winter/Spring Quarter, we plan to have a Seminar on Modern Physics topics geared towards application in high schools. We will offer 12 teachers the opportunity to improve their understanding of the subject and apply it in the classroom.

For the summer, we are focusing on the RET program, where we hope to attract federal funding for teacher stipends.