This planning grant is being used to develop the Helio-PROTEGEE (Physics Research Opportunity Toward Equality using a Grassroots Education Experience) program, which is a grassroots effort to engage talented students from diverse backgrounds in hands-on research experiences in heliophysics topics, and to mentor students in heliophysics so that they may be successfully placed in NSF-REU summer research programs. The program is motivated by daunting statistics. African-Americans are under-represented in physics at all levels, and it is estimated that African-Americans make up only about 1% of the approximately 1200 solar, geospace and heliospheric physicists in the United States. One difficulty of recruiting minority students to heliophysics is simple geography. Fifty-four percent of African-American's live in the Southeast region of the United States and 77% of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are in the Southeast. The vast majority of heliophysicists, however, live and work outside of this region. The heliophysics research groups at University of Alabama-Huntsville and the Marshall Space Flight Center are notable exceptions. These institutions are situated within a four-hour drive of 21 HBCUs, offering an ideal resource for engaging diverse students in hands-on geoscience activities, facilitating recruitment of under-represented students into the field.
Two key techniques that have been proven to successfully engage and retain African- American students in STEM disciplines are mentoring and inclusion in research programs. The ultimate goal of the Helio-PROTEGEE program is to expose a large number of under-represented students to research opportunities in heliophysics, to cultivate sustainable connections with faculty at the HBCU's, to develop mentor relationships with interested students, and to recruit students for existing and on-going heliophysics summer research programs, specifically NSF heliophysics research experience for undergraduate (REU) programs. The planning effort underway will define strategies for conducting meaningful outreach at 10 targeted universities in the southeastern US and engaging interested STEM majors in introductory heliophysics workshops. One goal of the planning effort is to develop mentoring relationships with a fraction of the students so as to help them find REU positions and provide them with additional background experiences in solar physics.
We received an award for 1 year of funding (extended to 18 months) to look at ways we can enhance diversity in the field of solar and heliospheric physics. Our proposal was for an extensive program, but we were instead awarded a significantly smaller sum for a de-scoped effort. We made contacts at 7 targeted universities in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. We visited each of these and met with faculty and students. In some instances we made short presentations in the introductory physics classes, and in other cases we met students in group settings. The goal of these meetings was to make students aware of the research opportunites available to undergraduates, and to encourage students to apply for such programs, especially NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs. By giving students at minority-serving institutions the support and confidence to apply for such opportunities, the pool of applicants and participants for REU's will become more diverse. And since there is evidence that participation in research helps to retain students in STEM fields, our efforts could have a measurable impact on diversity in heliophysics. In addition to the project outlined above, we also run the UAH-MSFC REU program (AGS-1157027). During the last two years (2013 & 2014) which follow our outreach activities we have seen a significant jump in the number of applications to our REU from minority students when compared to our first year (2012) which preceded this project. Figures 1, 2 & 3 show how applications from students of Black Non-Hispanic background increased the most. These results show that personalized outreach can yield enhanced interest in summer research programs, which ultimately leads to improved retention of minority students in STEM fields.
