proposal2007_draft09.. - Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics ...

carried through, using up a total of 42 thousand hours on about 10 OSG sites. Significantly larger
submissions from other groups are now being discussed with the OSG Council and the formation
of a BIO Virtual Organization is being considered.
The proposed research has a strong educational component. Obviously, it would provide training
for a number of graduate students. Over the last 5 years, we have sponsored summer research
positions for 7 JHU undergraduates at Fermilab and JHU. These have been extremely successful:
the students have performed at a high level, they have continued their involvement during the
academic year, and they have continued in particle physics after graduation. Both types of students
learn considerable computer-based problem solving skills that are found to be extremely useful by
American industry.
The educational impact of the project is not limited to the education of graduate and undergraduate
university students. Over the last two summers, Blumenfeld has taught a course on
Particle Physics to sixteen high school students as part of the Johns Hopkins Pre-College Program.
The JHU group has hosted a QuarkNet center for six years. During the summer of 2002, two
Baltimore City public high school teachers worked with members of the CDF group at Fermilab.
During the summers of 2003-2007, we have hosted particle physics oriented workshops for groups of
9-13 area science teachers (associate teachers). These programs. which were organized largely by
Barnett, have featured pedagogical lectures given by all of the faculty and a number of workshops
on classroom techniques.
An outgrowth of the QuarkNet program has been the annual “JHU Physics Fair” which was
suggested by one of the QuarkNet teachers and is organized by a committee of JHU researchers
and Quarknet teachers chaired by Barnett. Four Physics Fairs has been held on April Saturdays
from 2004 to 2007. The most recent was attended by more than 500 visitors from the Baltimore
metropolitan area. It featured a high school team competition, individual competitions at all
levels, a building contest that was open to all, continuously performed demonstrations (more than
200 in all), a special plenary demonstration show, liquid nitrogen ice cream, various live lectures
and video presentations, visits to research labs, and sunspot viewing using the Maryland Space
Grant telescope. A staff of approximately 80 JHU faculty, researchers, graduate students, and
undergraduate students donated their time to this event. It was supported by JHU’s MRSEC,
QuarkNet, the WMAP Collaboration, JHU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, and a number
of lesser donors. All involved remain enthusiastic about hosting the next annual event.
Barnett, Swartz and two Quarknet teachers participated in the 2007 EPPOG International
Masterclass program organized by CERN and Dresden. This program introduces high school
teachers and students to the details of particle physics research. We had six students from two high
schools, one public and one private, participate in this program in 2007. Due to an enthusiastic
response from the teachers and students, we expect increased participation of schools, teachers and
students in the 2008 Masterclass Program.
We are striving to increase the diversity of our research program. Fifty percent of the undergraduates
who have worked with the group are women. Two of our most recent five graduate
students are women. We propose to recruit future summer/academic year hires at Morgan State
University, a HBCU located in Baltimore, to further diversify our effort. Thirty percent of our
Quarknet-affiliated teachers are women and/or under-represented minorities and we are actively
seeking new participants who will increase this fraction. Finally, we note that the students served
by our Quarknet Center, Physics Fair, and Masterclass activities are mostly from the Baltimore
City school district and are mostly members of minority groups.
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