This award provides funding for the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics, a two-day conference for undergraduate women in physics taking place on January 16-17, 2010 simultaneously at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), the Ohio State University (OSU), the North Carolina Research Triangle (NCRT), and Yale University. The conference has two overarching goals. One goal is to give young women the confidence, motivation, and resources to apply to graduate school and successfully complete a Ph.D. in physics or a related discipline. The other goal is to make undergraduate women in physics more aware of the wide range of career opportunities available to them. The conferences will be modeled on previous conferences at the University of Illinois, Urbana (UIUC), University of Michigan, the University of Southern California (USC), and Yale over the past four years. This conference is intended to reach as diverse a group of women in physics as possible, and the organizers are committed to providing access to the conference at minimal cost to the participants to assure that a lack of funds does not discourage participation. This award is supported by the Division of Physics, the Division of Materials Research, and the Division of Astronomical Sciences.
The 2010 Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics was held simultaneously on January 15-17, 2010, at four locations across the United States: at University of California at Santa Cruz, Duke University (jointly sponsored by Duke, NCCU, NC State and UNC ChapelHill), Ohio State University, and Yale University. At the Southeast conference, held at the Thomas Center of DukeUniversity, there were a total of 82 participants. There were 64undergraduate student attendees; 11 students presented talks and12 presented posters. There were six invited talks andone video talk (the video talk was shared among the four conferences). There were also local lab tours and two panel discussions. The 2010 conference website is www.physics.ncsu.edu/scuwp/2010/ More photos can be found on the website. According to surveys filled in by the attendees before and after the conference, we were successful in achieving the conference goals by improving students' connections, their awareness of opportunities available to them and their confidence about a future in physics. The students were highly engaged in nearly all activities, and the panel discussions were especially lively and interactive. Below are some excerpted comments from the survey. I got a lot out of talks, grad students, visiting the labs and enjoyed all of the above and getting to interact with other physics women. The career panel and grad panel were most helpful and I felt very comfortable asking all the questions. The best part of the conference was the panel of career physicists & graduate students. The advice & guidance from them was very encouraging. The peer talks and poster presentations were awesome and the career panel was really interesting. I LOVED that we got ``physics'' out of this BUT the best part is getting that crucial information about the best way to go about doing certain things. The interactions we had at meals and outside of scheduled activites was great for networking. The lab tours opened my eyes to what research is out there. The open social atmosphere at meals really helped me to feel comfortable making connections. The wide variety of talks helped me find something of interest every day. I thought that the best aspect of the conference were the faculty involved and how they gave us advice and taught us about what pursuing physics is all about. I loved the career panel and graduate school panel. I also though they were great at making sure to talk to us and they were all really approachable. I thought this conference was excellent! I am so grateful that I had to opportunity to participate in it. I also liked meeting students from other schools and seeing that I definitely was not one in three women majoring in physics. I also liked getting insight into the personal aspect of being a woman in physics like with respect to families and life outside of work. The food was amazing, which made the conference even better, but even if it wasn't I would still be this satisfied with it because I learned and experienced so much.
