This award supports a conference request to hold three simultaneous conferences at the University of Southern California (USC), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Illinois), and Yale. The conferences are aimed at undergraduate women majoring in physics and have several goals: to foster an undergraduate culture in which women are encouraged and supported to pursue and succeed in higher education in physics; to give young women the confidence, motivation, and resources to apply to graduate school and successfully complete a Ph.D. in physics; and to strengthen the network of women in physics nationally. The conference will be modeled after regional conferences in 2008 at Yale, USC, and Michigan, which in turn evolved from two previous national conferences held at USC in 2006 and 2007. This award is supported by the Division of Physics and the Division of Astronomical Sciences.
