Pre-MAP
I recently participated in the first University of Washington "Pre-Major in Astronomy Program" (Pre-MAP), which provides research opportunities for traditionally underrepresented freshmen. Pre-MAP is designed to reinforce interest in science and astronomy in minorities and women. It also provides an important venue for one-on-one interaction between student and scientist in what is traditionally an anonymous and daunting freshman year at a large University. I am encouraging and assisting two of the women I advised this year to participate in the University of Washington's Undergraduate Research Symposium. This provides an opportunity for exposure and resume building in just the first year of college, an important milestone for keeping the students excited about science and confident in their ability to work in the field. I will continue serving as teacher and mentor to these students, as well as students from future Pre-MAP cohorts.
At the Research Symposium
Below is our brochure, nicely rendered by Eric Hilton. You can also find .pdf files here and here.
Contact Pre-MAP
My students, Amber Almy and Amy Rose (both in the brochure above!), are currently learning the basics of astronomical image processing and photometry, and I hope to have some fun results here soon!
IGERT
The University of Washington is active in the development of an NSF IGERT proposal (IGERT: Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training) for time-domain astrophysics (Keivan Stassun PI), in which I intend to play an active role. The envisioned proposal includes collaborators at Yale, UW, NOAO, and Vanderbilt, and would create a graduate experience whose curricular focus includes time series analysis, high performance computing, and advanced statistical methods. This is an obvious and important set of tools for the next generation of astronomers, and clearly parallel to my research interests.