This award provides funding for the 8th annual Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics and for a formative assessment of the effectiveness of the conferences in meeting their goals. The next conferences will take place on January 18-20, 2013, simultaneously at Caltech, Colorado School of Mines, Cornell University, the University of Central Florida, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Texas.
The conferences have two overarching goals: 1) To give undergraduate women the resources, motivation, and confidence to apply to graduate school and to successfully complete a Ph.D. in physics or a related discipline; and 2) To increase awareness by undergraduate women in physics of the wide range of career opportunities available to them. Regional conferences are held simultaneously to maximize student attendance by minimizing travel, to increase the excitement of the participants in a joint national venture, and to allow the interactive simulcast of a keynote address. The conference goals are achieved by providing a series of inspiring talks by female physicists, panel discussions on graduate school and physics careers, student presentation sessions, and ample opportunity for networking and informal mentoring. The success of these goals will be measured by surveys given to students before and after the conferences, as well as by longitudinal studies following the students' post-graduation paths and comparing them with female student cohorts who did not attend the conferences.
The main goal for this project was the organization, execution and follow-up activities for the Western Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics, hosted at the California Institute of Technology on January 18-20, 2013. See the conference website www.cuwp.caltech.edu/ This was one of six conferences held simultaneously across the country, supported by this NSF award; see this APS-hosted website for a list of the six 2013 conferences and a link to the website for each of the six conferences: www.aps.org/programs/women/workshops/cuwip.cfm The Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics provide unique and valuable experiences for both the conference organizers and conference participants. Caltech received 223 student applications from 61 different colleges and universities. The original target size for the conference was 100 students, but it was expanded due to demand, with the final number of student participants reaching 200. The participants came from 55 different institutions. The conference featured a number of interactive elements: • Panels on the graduate school experience, undergraduate research, graduate school fellowships and graduate school admissions • Lab tours on the Caltech campus covering quantum optics, gravitational wave detection (LIGO), high-energy astrophysics (NuSTAR Explorer Mission), quantum optomechanics and condensed matter physics. • A JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) visit to explore their museum and listen to a JPL research talk. • A special screening of The PhD Movie with the cast of the movie and PhD Comics author, Jorge Cham, fielding questions about graduate school. Each speaker was asked to integrate into their talk a brief description of their personal career path. The keynote talk by Margaret Murnane described her research and explored the need for diversity in meeting the scientific and engineering challenges of the future. At Caltech, external invited speakers Dr. Denise Caldwell (Director, NSF Division of Physics) and Dr. Regina Dugan (former Director of DARPA, currently at Motorola Mobility) spoke about career paths related to policy and industry, respectively. Additionally, the Caltech President gave a welcoming speech to the conference attendees, and three Caltech faculty members (Professors Nai-Chang Yeh, John Preskill and Judith Cohen) also gave talks about their research and career paths in areas of quantum matter, quantum information and astrophysics. The primary purpose of the conference is to retain female students in physics as they consider graduate school. It does this by building the skills and knowledge for success, exposing them to the wealth of career opportunities, and providing an opportunity to meet and network with both more senior women physicists and other women physics students. We anticipate that they will return to their home institution with increased enthusiasm, and serve as ambassadors for physics to their families, friends and fellow students. Overall feedback on the conference was extremely positive. One student wrote, "It was amazing to talk with so many women about physics. It really improved my confidence." Another stated, "It actually far exceeded my expectations: I figured I would learn about careers and research in physics, which I did, but I had no idea it would make me so excited about them." A third student wrote, "It was amazing... I got to meet other women in physics, I made some new friends, I got to listen to women speak about their experiences in physics, I learned about grad school, and it increased my desire to apply to grad school."
