The PI, Dr. Joseph Salah, will head the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) and Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) site program at MIT Haystack Observatory. Haystack Observatory is an MIT multidisciplinary research center that develops and operates large radio telescopes for astronomical observations, and utilizes high-power radars for measurements of the structure of Earth's upper atmosphere. The site will host eight undergraduate students annually, recruited nationally, for summer research internships in astronomy and atmospheric science under the REU program. In addition, four pre-college science teachers, recruited locally, will be hosted annually under the RET program to learn about the Observatory's current research and apply it to their high-school science curricula.
Haystack has been a successful REU site since 1987 and has participated in the RET program since its inception in 1999. The REU and RET projects have been important elements in Haystack's education and public outreach effort, and have served to demonstrate the benefits of scientific research supported by the public.
During the period 2007-2011, MIT Haystack Observatory provided research experiences for 44 undergraduate students under the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. The students, 34 male and 10 female, represented 38 different undergraduate institutions: 25 juniors and seniors (not graduated), 15 sophomores, and 4 freshmen. The 44 students were selected from a total applicant pool of 545 students over the five years. Recruitment and advertisement of the REU program was carried out on a national scale via direct mailings to faculty members, university departments, bulletin board postings, and student newspaper announcements. The REU program comprised scientific and technical research project for each summer intern under the guidance of one or more staff mentors. A series of interdisciplinary seminars was presented each year with focus on basic principles of radio astronomy and atmospheric science, as well as discussions of Haystack research areas. These were accompanied by in-depth tours of the numerous facilities located on the Haystack site. Group meetings encouraged broad student and staff interactions. One of the strengths of Haystack Observatory is the mix between scientific research and technical advancement that allows for greater advancement than would be possible without the dual focus. The REU student projects are similarly be divided into two categories: scientific analysis and physical interpretation of astronomical and atmospheric observations, and technical development of instrumentation and software to enhance operational systems. In brief summary, highlights of scientific projects include: detecting and mapping Class I methanol masers in star-forming regions; detecting and characterizing solar activity with the Haystack-developed Small Radio Telescope (SRT) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA); observing the circumstellar wakes from mass-losing evolved stars; exploring the link between sudden stratospheric warming events and the ionosphere; and using incoherent scatter radars to characterize subauroral polarization streams. Technical highlights include: development of wideband radio tuners and digital receivers for distributed instrument arrays; designing a solid-state amplifier for use in incoherent scatter radars; conditioning a cryogenic sapphire oscillator for use as a high-frequency VLBI standard; development of instrumentation for the MOSAIC ozone spectrometer system; and exploration of field-of-view shaping for next-generation VLBI arrays using weighting functions in the visibility domain. At the end of the program each summer, students presented their results at a mini-symposium at Haystack, which are archived on the Haystack REU website, www.haystack.mit.edu/edu/reu/index.html. Students were also strongly encouraged to report the results of their REU projects at meetings (e.g., AAS, AGU, CEDAR) and in professional journals. In the past 5 years, Haystack REU students have been the presenting author on 13 conference contributions (5 AAS, 4 AGU, 1 AMS, 1 URSI, 1 CEDAR, and 1 Texas APS) and co-authors on another 11 presentations. The Haystack RET program gave high school science teachers research experiences that allowed them to enrich their science curricula by bringing current research into the classroom. Teachers learned about selected research topics at Haystack and interacted with scientists engaged in research to jointly develop teaching units including hands-on inquiry-based activities for middle and high school STEM classes. The RET participants completed a draft of their unit at the end of their first summer and then tested the unit in the classroom during the academic year. They returned to Haystack for a month the following summer to refine the unit based on their experiences. Finally, they published their materials to be freely available to the educational community in electronic form. The 2007-2011 RET units can be found on the Haystack website and are disseminated through multiple channels, including the Digital Library for Earth Science Education and the MIT Outreach Database. Not counting hits from MIT and Haystack websites, the RET resources web page has had nearly 200 unique repeat visitors since the beginning of 2010. In the past 5 years, 11 local (eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire) teachers participated in the RET program. The success of the RET program in developing educational units for the classroom encouraged Haystack to hold two high school teacher workshops in 2009 and 2011, providing professional development to local teachers in STEM fields through exposure to the research done by Haystack scientists and to the educational materials and pedagogical experience of previous RET participants.
