b) Broader Impacts

General Public to Undergraduate Students

Outreach Activity: Exploring Upcoming Eclipses

Audience: General Public, and 2023 Explore WIU Activity for High-School Students.

Students Involved: Al Evans (WIU Graduate Student), Amisha J. Rane (WIU Graduate Student), Gabriel Sojka (WIU Physics Major), Drew Hecox (WIU Engineering Physics Major), Punya Paudel (WIU Graduate Student)

Click in the link to access the activity: Exploring Upcoming Eclipses 

Online Outreach: Exploring the Hidden Universe

Audience: high-school students, WIU 2021 Science Summer Camp (click here for camp information ).

Students Involved: Moreom Akter

Click in the link to access the activity: Exploring the Hidden Universe

Online Outreach: Exploring the Night Sky - Past, Present and Future

Students Involved: Natalie Kovacevic,  Moreom Akter

Click in the link to access the activity: Exploring the Night Sky

Online Outreach: Educational Videos

Students Involved: Natalie Kovacevic (WIU undergraduate), Karen Araya-Porras (9th grade high-school student, Virgina)

Development of Jupyter Notebook Demos for Virtual Outreach Activities:

Students Involved: Emmanuel Sanchez Tovar, Natalie Kovacevic, Hunter La Croix 

- Jupyter Notebooks available to download (or open it in Google Colaboratory directly):

• Color map in image of supermassive black hole

• Stellarium view of M87

• Sky chart: the sky this evening

• Size of a black hole

• Introduction to Interferometry

• Build a planetary system

- Upload your selected notebook to Google Colaboratory: https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/intro.ipynb

- Follow the instructions in the notebook, enjoy the activity!

Hands-on Demos:

See info about demo: Click Here

Educational Resources for Graduate and Undergraduate Students in Research

Development of Jupyter Notebook to introduce concepts of Radio Astronomy and Research:

Hands-on activity about single-dish observations and data reduction based on a dataset from the project. Download and extract directory, open .ipynb file in Jupyter (file compatible with MacOS and Linux): Hands-on Activity: Reduction of Arecibo ONOFF Data in Jupyter Notebook, CH Filament.zip

Development of Jupyter Notebook about Basics of Radio Astronomy:

Hands-on activity about basic concepts of radio astronomy. Download the jupyter notebook and open it in Google Colab, or your local jupyter environment: Workshop_Radio_Astronomy_Basics.ipynb 

Mentoring and Professional Development of Students

One-on-one mentoring of students: 

Examples: Junior-High and high-school students from Southeastern Junior-High School (Augusta, Illinois), Natalie Kovacevic (WIU undergraduate student), Jumin Lee (WIU undergraduate student), Emma Clark (WIU undergraduate student), Jonathan Skaggs (WIU undergraduate student), Michael Starzyk (WIU MS student), Richard Lambert (WIU MS student), Emmanuel Sanchez-Tovar (WIU MS student). Work has resulted in 9 poster presentations at local and regional conferences (four students received best poster awards at the WIU Natural Sciences Symposium), three junior-high science fair competitions (Gold Award at the Illinois State Fair; first overall award in physics at the Culver Stockton Science Fair; and an outstanding recognition, Computer Science Award, and US Air Force Award at the Illinois Junior Academy of Science Region 10 Science Fair).

Training and professional development: 

Examples: WIU undergraduate student (Emma Clark) attended the American Physical Society Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at Northwestern University. As part of a field trip to the Washington DC area and the Green Bank Telescope, students attended the "Symposium Highlighting Evidence-Based Interventions to Address the Underrepresentation of Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine", at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, and received a technical tour of the Green Bank Telescope.