This award supports a new Research Experience for Undergraduates site to be located at CUNY Queensborough Community College. The site will expand community college student participation in the application of physics to astronomy and biology. The theoretical aspect will focus on data mining and analysis using the national science data banks such as the NASA Hubble data and the RCSB protein data. The experimental aspect will focus on data collection using the computer controlled laser labs via LabVIEW. The projects will focus on optical measurements of biological samples and their relationships to the biological growth conditions. The site will recruit eight students and two high school teachers each year, and will provide a national model for community college based research tailored for lower division students. The remote controlled laser lab capability will enable a consortium of community colleges to share expensive equipment and introduce talented community college students to bio-physics, medical instrumentation and related careers; as well as lasers, optics, photonics and related engineering careers. The utilization of the national science data banks under a physics theme will enable the community college physics faculty to bring the forefront of science to the classrooms to attract and retain talented students, and to inspire high school teachers as well.
The Queensborough Community College (QCC) REU program is a model for community college participation in research. Community college students performed research under the supervision of and in collaboration with community college faculty predominantly at facilities at a community college. Through the use of personal recruiting students the REU was successful at recruiting students from regional community colleges with approximately 70% of participants coming from colleges other than QCC. Most of these students had no previous research experience. This recruiting effort was successful at attracting participants from under-represented groups with more than 50% of participants from such groups. The students completed projects involving data mining analysis using national science data banks, such as those provided by NASA, analysis of data from experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s (BNL) National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) and Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The research on the RIHC data was part of a collaboration of many colleges and the QCC REU students were the only ones from a community college. Additionally participants preformed experiments in QCC’s laser and biology laboratories. These experiments included the development of a novel fiber-optic probe for heart rate measurements. The results of the research led to numerous conference presentations and journal publications with approximately 50% of participants as co-authors. This project increased community college student retention and graduation rates, increased the rate of successful transfer to baccalaureate programs in STEM fields and the 4 yr degree graduation rate. It is expected that the improvement will be even greater as graduation rates are generally measured after six years, so the full extent of the improvement in graduation, transfer and 4 yr graduation rates will not be know for a few more years. The one goal of the project that was not met was that of encouraging participants to apply to other REU programs after completion of the QCC program as none of the participants went on to other REU programs. This result is not as poor as that number indicates as more than 10% of participants went on to non-REU summer research programs at national laboratories and major universities.
