Dartmouth College will recruit a tenure-track assistant professor in the area of experimental space science. Although the new faculty member will be assigned to the Physics and Astronomy Department with an adjunct appointment in the Engineering School, the Engineering School will contribute many key resources, including laboratory space and technical support, making this project a truly interdisciplinary effort. The new faculty member will lead an innovative undergraduate research program, modeled after the pilot DartSat student satellite design project which has been run at Dartmouth over the past six years, but without benefit of dedicated faculty guidance. The new faculty member will allow Dartmouth to fill critical gaps in its space science curriculum, as well as increase the frequency of existing course offerings. Public outreach efforts at Dartmouth in space sciences, currently involving K-12 teacher training through the local science museum, will be strengthened by development of a pre-college student program which will grow out of the undergraduate research program. The new faculty member will develop an independent externally-funded research program, which will sustain graduate and undergraduate student training in experimental space sciences, addressing the shortfall of opportunities for hands-on training of the next generation of space scientists that has been identified in National Academy reports. This research program will involve partnerships with other academic and research institutions and industry, and take advantage of related theory, ground- and space-based infrastructure investments by NSF and other government agencies. Creating a tenure line position in experimental space sciences at Dartmouth with resources from two departments will ensure that the interdisciplinary space science program developed at Dartmouth over the past two decades will sustain national needs in space sciences manpower.
