Please direct comments to Kristen Schleich.
Our Department has a long history of initiating innovative outreach activities aimed at increasing public awareness and understanding of the impact and excitement of physics and astronomy and, in part, at recruiting bright, interested students into our undergraduate and graduate programs.
Through the Michael Crooks Outreach Laboratory, we currently offer summer camps and the mini-University to engage students aged 7 - 17 in physics and astronomy and to introduce them to exciting areas of new research through tours and talks. We run the International Physics Olympiad regional training camp and the Canadian Association of Physicists Exam for highly academically inclined grade 11 and 12 students. We also are actively involved in the International Physics Olympiad itself, annually serving as team leaders; we organized the 1997 Olympiad in Sudbury, Ontario. One of us currently serves as secretary of the international organization.
We offer science teacher workshops to introduce new and exciting ideas for physics and astronomy teaching to those in primary and secondary education. We also have a course in the development of new physics demonstrations for undergraduates interested in becoming teachers. We host high school students in work placements and job shadowing opportunities that allow them to experience the everyday life of a scientist.
For 24 years we have organized the Physics Olympics, an all day competition for almost 400 high school students that fosters teamwork and Physics understanding through a set of creative, hands-on physics challenges. This activity is also notable for bringing teams to UBC from all over BC.
We hold Saturday night open houses at the Astronomy Observatory, that allow the public to experience the wonders of our universe for themselves.
In addition, we run astronomy and physics shows and tours of our observatory and research laboratories for school groups, community groups and the public in general. We also co-sponsor events in Astronomy with the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre and maintain active connection to the media, with faculty members contributing to radio, television and print articles on exiting topics in physics and astronomy.
Thanks in part to programs like Science World's ``Scientists and Innovators in the Schools'' program and the UBC Speakers' Bureau, our faculty members also frequently visit primary and high schools in the Vancouver area to expose children's minds to the wonders and mysteries of our Universe, from the impossibly small to the infinitely large.
These activities currently reach thousands students, teachers, and members of the general public each year. They have direct impact on our image in the community and the image of UBC as a whole. They are also invaluable in recruiting; many of our best undergraduates have come to us from the Physics Olympics, Olympiad and CAP programs, during which they first became aware of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. In particular, approximately 40% of our Physics and Engineering Physics undergraduates participated in one of these activities. In addition, all of our programs address the recruiting issue at least obliquely. For example, the 12 and 13-year-old students who attended our first summer camp in 1996 are now applying for undergraduate courses. Indeed, some older high school students who volunteer at the summer camps also come to us as undergraduates.
We will to continue our current commitment to these outreach activities and programs. Plans for the future include the following improvements of our facilities for outreach:
We would also like to expand our outreach programs. For example, we would like to spur participation in ALTA, an unique innovative mixed research and education project in which high school students participate in cosmic ray research through a network of detectors based at high schools.
Additionally we are exploring the introduction of a Master's degree directed to high school science teachers interested in gaining experience in research while furthering their careers in education.
We are working on creating a joint position between UBC and the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, which is part would coordinate our outreach and education efforts with those of the Space Centre and the community.
We have also participated in the pilot project of a ``Science 101'' course for residents of the Downtown Eastside; we hope to expand on that project in the future. Our Department and the Space Centre are actively seeking funding to enable regular free evenings at the Space Centre, hosted by UBC astronomers, especially for the Downtown Eastside community and other Vancouver communities that may never have felt that facilities like UBC and the Space Centre are accessible to them. We are making overtures to the community centres to provide more astronomy and physics education material and opportunities for young people who need an outlet for their curiosity and interest.
In addition, we plan to increase recruiting efforts directed toward advertising the wide variety of career opportunities open to Physics, Astronomy or Engineering Physics graduates. These opportunities are not well understood by high school students. We plan to address this need by arranging recruiting visits to high schools to explain the opportunities at UBC in Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy. An annual meeting with selected high school physics teachers to discuss topics of mutual interest is under discussion. We are optimistic that a vigorous high-school recruiting initiative will result in more top-level students seeking admission to Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy.
Note that continuation and expansion of our outreach activities will take additional resources, both in funding of equipment and supplies and in technical staffing and faculty time needed to carry out the current programs and any of these future initiatives.