Toolkit for Success is a pre-college research and skill development immersion program for incoming underrepresented undergraduate minorities in physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. The six-week summer program is designed to foster inclusion, belonging, and self-confidence in research, academics, and community. Students train with mentors, code in Python, learn about diverse...
At the University of Maryland, the First-Year Innovation & Research Experience (FIRE) is one of the ways that first-year students can engage in impactful research. FIRE students go through a three semester sequence where they are introduced to a research group, select and become familiar with how research works in their selected stream and work with a team to produce meaningful results. Peer...
Over my career, I have published about 30 refereed journal articles with undergraduates, high school students and citizen scientists; currently I publish 3-5 such articles per year. The same techniques work with all of these groups to enable you to lead students to a successful conclusion of their research with a refereed journal article. In this talk, I will describe techniques that can be...
Physics students benefit from a structured problem solving strategy. In order to be successful, it should be explicitly taught, practiced on the board and in small groups, and required on homework and tests. The strategy involves the following four steps: What’s Happening, Isolate the Unknown, Substitution, Evaluation. This problem solving approach increases accuracy, improves...
