In this collaborative effort, Drs. Rebecca Koopmann (Union College), Sarah Higdon (Georgia Southern University), Thomas Balonek (Colgate University), and members of their consortium team will carry out an array of activities directed toward involving undergraduate students in real-world, cutting-edge research projects to collect, analyze, and, in some cases, publish data from the ALFALFA (The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey, where ALFA is an acronym for the Arecibo L-band Feed Array project. ALFALFA is large survey for neutral hydrogen in galaxies external to the Milky Way being carried out using the seven-beam ALFA receiver on the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope. ALFALFA is expected to detect over 20,000 galaxies over the next five years, resulting in a wide range of scientific applications. The program has four components: 1) An annual undergraduate ALFALFA team workshop will be held at Arecibo that will introduce students to the ALFA project and communicate science programs and observing and data analysis techniques; 2) Students, with the help of faculty mentors, will develop their own research programs and do their own observing using Arecibo, the world''s largest telescope; 3) Computer infrastructure for data analysis will be provided to smaller schools; and 4) Summer research positions will be provided to students on a competitive basis to help keep them on a science track. The program will have wide impact at 14 universities belonging to the Undergraduate ALFALFA Team consortium.
The program will advance discovery and promote learning among undergraduate and graduate students in a diverse array of university settings, both public and private, across the country. All team members will participate in the annual workshops and will be encouraged to present their results at scientific meetings. Infrastructure for research and education will be promoted via the collaboration between students and faculty and the observatory, which will stimulate undergraduate research at the smaller colleges. Curricular and outreach material for both undergraduate and K-12 application, developed at the participating institutions and in collaboration with the Director of the Angel Ramos Visitor Center at Arecibo, will be made publicly available. Women comprise a large fraction of the faculty involved in the program.
(UAT) is a consortium of nineteen undergraduate-focused institutions that promote student research in astronomy via involvement in the ALFALFA survey being conducted at the Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico. The ALFALFA project seeks to take a census of / map out the distribution of cold hydrogen atoms (HI) in galaxies in the local Universe. The radio survey is sensitive enough to detect hydrogen gas radio wavelength emission from over thirty thousand galaxies within a distance of three-quarters of a billion light years from our Milky Way Galaxy. The ALFALFA survey provides information about the hydrogen gas properties in, and the distribution of gas within and around, individual galaxies. The survey results allow astronomers to map out the distribution of galaxies that contain large amounts of atomic hydrogen and to compare the amount of gas with other characteristics of the galaxy. Different types of galaxies contain various amounts of cold hydrogen gas. Combining the hydrogen gas survey results with observations at other wavelengths of light (visible, infrared, ultraviolet) provides information on the range of galaxy characteristics and star formation histories. The survey is designed to also discover low mass objects that contain sufficient gas to be detected by the emission from hydrogen atoms but which have not yet formed many stars (‘starless’ galaxies). Understanding the nature of these galaxies is an important step to understanding how galaxies form and evolve. The Undergraduate ALFALFA Team has utilized a collaborative and peer mentoring model to educate and train students and faculty as they investigate the results from this survey. Over the six years of this grant, and two associated NSF grants, over two hundred undergraduate students and faculty members from the nineteen institutions have participated in the observations, data calibration, and analysis of the radio survey results. They have made substantial contributions to the scientific output of the ALFALFA extragalactic hydrogen survey and follow-up studies. Team students and faculty have presented their results at national meetings and through reviewed scientific publications. A major component of the Team’s program has been to provide undergraduate students with the opportunity to conduct hands-on observations with the 1000-foot diameter Arecibo Observatory radio telescope. Students and their faculty mentors either travel to Puerto Rico to conduct observations on-site or remotely control the telescope from their home institutions. The Team holds an annual workshop at Arecibo Observatory, where the focus is on collaborative learning. Students and faculty learn the fundamentals of radio astronomy and observational techniques, data analysis, and the classification and nature of galaxies. They get the opportunity to conduct observations with (and control!) the world’s largest radio telescope and analyze results with peers from other Team institutions. Being at the observatory (either as part of the workshop or during other observing sessions) gives the students and faculty mentors the opportunity to interact with other visiting scholars and the observatory’s technical and scientific staff. The students also get an insider’s tour of the facility during the on-site visit. This program has extended research opportunities to undergraduates who otherwise would not have been able to participate in a major international astronomical project. Undergraduates from a diverse set of institutions and backgrounds are introduced to radio astronomy instrumentation and observational techniques, extragalactic astronomy research, and data analysis. For many of the Undergraduate ALFALFA Team students, this NSF-supported program provides them with research opportunities and personal experiences that would otherwise not be available to them. This exposure broadens their prospective of potential careers in astronomy and other STEM careers, while at the same time enriching their undergraduate education. The model developed is applicable to other scientific collaborations. You can learn more about the Undergraduate ALFALFA Team activities at the Undergraduate ALFALFA Team's web page http://egg.astro.cornell.edu/alfalfa/ugradteam/ugradteam.php or the ALFALFA blog http://alfalfasurvey.wordpress.com/.
