Our department hosted the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) in January 2020. The website is available here: https://ou.edu/cuwip
Below are some photos from the conference!
Our own Kellen Lawson (graduate student in John Wisniewski's group) was featured in this PR about the direct imaging discovery of the forming protoplanet AB Aur b, that was published in Nature Astronomy recently. Congrats on playing a key role in this discovery Kellen
ou.edu/cas/news-updates/OU-Kellen-Lawson-Nature-Astronomy
Julianna Voelker, one of our graduating astrophysics seniors, has been awarded the 2022 F. Donald Clark Award for Excellence in Fine Arts.
This is the highest honor for undergraduates in the College of Fine Arts. An excerpt from the facebook page of the OU School of Music, where Julianna is a music performance major specializing in Saxophone, is given below. Congratulations Julianna!
Message from Lunar Sooners:
Next week, on April 4th at 4:30PM, we will be holding our first in-person Lunar Sooners meeting since the start of the pandemic. The meeting will be in Nielsen Hall room 103, and there will be pizza! Given that it's the first meeting in quite some time, there will be a fair bit to discuss, including officer elections, resuming outreach activities, and Soonertarium training.
Lunar Sooners is open to both graduates and undergraduates from all disciplines, so I hope to see a good turnout!
Message from Cora DeFrancesco:
Hacklahoma
This past month, several students from the department participated in Hacklahoma. This is an annual event run through the CS department and sponsored by Major League Hacking. The 2022 hackathon hosted 137 participants in a hybrid 24-hour event. Alex Parsells, Cora DeFrancesco, and Cosme Aquino Ovelar won Best Beginner Hack for their project titled Opportunity Rover Distance Calculator.
Women in Physics
In collaboration with the Community and Inclusion (C&I) Committee, WiP is excited to host Dr. Chandralekha Singh for Colloquium on April 7. Her talk will be preceded with a reading group centered around one of Dr. Singh’s publications on women in the classroom. Please see the C&I announcement to RSVP for the reading group. Dr. Singh will also join us for a short discussion about the reading group following Colloquium.
Pictured Below: Cora, Alex, and Cosme with their Best Beginner awards at Hacklahoma
Message from Jugal Talukdar, President, Graduate Student Association (GPSI):
We are extremely delighted to inform you that GPSI in collaboration with the Community and Inclusion Committee will organize Graduate Research Poster Session (GRPS) on Friday, April 22nd. Interested grad students are requested to submit their poster abstracts by filling out this form before 11:59 pm CDT on Friday, April 11. The participants will have the opportunity to win the best poster award, the best presentation award, and the best physics contribution award which will be awarded at the end of the poster session. More information regarding the event will be shared in the coming days.
The Community and Inclusion (C&I) Committee is inviting you to participate in two local learning communities. The first local learning community was held on Tuesday, March 29, 2.30-3.30pm.
The second is tied to the departmental DEI colloquium, hosted by WiP and C&I, that will be given by Dr. Chandralekha Singh on Thursday, April 7. Dr. Singh has kindly agreed to stay after the colloquium for an informal half-hour discussion.
The first Learning Community discussed the paper: Physical Review Physics Education Research 14, 020123 (2018) entitled “Female students with A's have similar physics self-efficacy as male students with C's in introductory courses: A cause for alarm?” by E.M. Marshman, Z.Y. Kalender, T. Nokes-Malach, C. Schunn, and C. Singh.
The second local learning community will meet twice in April (and possibly also once in May) and provide a space to reflect on the material covered in the online course offered by the Inclusive STEM Teaching Project, which will run March 23-May 4, 2022 (see inclusivestemteaching.org).
Registration for the online course is free and open now (registration might close a week or so prior to the start of the online course). The Inclusive STEM Teaching Project is a 6-week course (2-3 hours per week) designed to advance the awareness, self-efficacy, and the ability of faculty, postdocs, and doctoral students to cultivate inclusive STEM learning environments for all their students and to develop themselves as reflective, inclusive practitioners. The local learning community will meet during the following times:
Tuesday, April 12, 2.30-3.30pm
Tuesday, April 26, 2.30-3.30pm
(and possibly Tuesday, May 3, 2.30-3.30pm)
