Engaging college physics students with photonics research

Abstract

As educators and researchers in the field of photonics, we find what we do to be very exciting, and sharing this passion and excitement to our university students is natural to us. Via outreach programs and college research funding, a new college and university collaboration has broadened our student audience: photonics is brought into the college classroom and research opportunities are provided to college students. Photonics-themed active learning activities are conducted in the college Waves and Modern Physics class, helping students forge relationships between course content and modern communications technologies. Presentations on photonics research are prepared and presented by the professor and past college student-researchers. The students are then given a full tour of the photonics university laboratories. Furthermore, funds are set aside to give college students a unique opportunity to assist the college professor with experiments during a paid summer research internship.

Education development employing latest free space optical research papers for undergraduate communication engineering students in class and examination

“…The other two teaching methods used in this course allow students to embrace awareness of the field's scientific publications and provide them with undergraduate research capabilities 3,4 . The third method challenges students to extract specific information from research papers.…”

Successfully implementing inquiry-based labs: a case study for a college waves and modern physics course

“…The IBL case study was set in a Québec (Canada) college level Waves and Modern Physics course taken by all students pursuing studies in the Natural Sciences (including Health Science and Pure & Applied Science) [7,14]. This course follows one on Mechanics and is equivalent to a freshman year physics course elsewhere in North America.…”

Students’ reflections on the impact of paid summer photonics research internships

“…We have previously reported on a college-university collaboration allowing pre-university science students to engage in university photonics research through paid summer internships [2]. From the university's perspective, this collaboration allows for photonics outreach to students before they choose university programs.…”

“…Furthermore, this collaboration includes university lab visits, allowing college students to visit the facilities in small groups and allowing individual day long visits to witness experiments. Last, this collaboration helped facilitate the enhancement of course material linking photonics technology to content studied in the college Waves and Modern Physics course [2,3]. Between 2012-2022, i) 7 college students have participated in paid summer research internships, ii) Approximately 80 college students have visited the university labs, and iii) over 500 college students (14 classes of ~36 students) have engaged with photonics content during their college Waves and Modern Physics course.…”