FORUM ON EDUCATION
August 1995

Sidebar: Get Involved! - How You Can Help

Industrial scientists:

Make contact with TYC physics faculty to discuss the establishment of linkages between the TYC and your company. For example:

• Offer to provide a site for a regional TYC21 meeting. Encourage attendance by interested industrial physicists and offer a tour of the facilities. The TYC21 program will run the meeting, so this is not a time consuming commitment.
• Investigate utilizing TYC know-how in technical courses offered to employees. For example, David Hata, full time faculty member and Department Head of Microelectronics Technology at Portland Community College (Portland, OR) also has an office at the INTEL Corporation site where he provides training in microelectronics to INTEL employees.
• Investigate the possibility of activity or employment of interested TYC faculty during the summers as researchers.
• Offer to be a resource for career advisement for students interested in employment in technical fields.

Academic researchers:

Many of the suggestions made above for industrial physicists are relevant. In addition:

• Extend invitations to colloquia to TYC faculty. Welcome and introduce attendees from the TYCs to your colleagues.
• Involve TYC faculty and students in activities of local and national student organizations, such as the Society of Physics Students. If chapters exist at both the TYC and the university, encourage joint activities and support each other's initiatives.
• Colleges with undergraduate research institutional grants could extend research opportunities to TYC students or recent graduates.
• Offer the resources of your upper-level laboratories to interested students. As an example of one successful program, Jerry Duggan and Jim Sybert of the University of North Texas presently have a curriculum grant where students from smaller colleges and particularly TYCs are invited for an afternoon, a whole day or a whole weekend, to conduct specially prepared modern physics laboratories.
• Support the establishment of scholarships for students transferring from TYCs. Universities frequently offer sizable scholarships to entering freshmen but few are offered at the sophomore/junior level for TYC student transfers. Just as with the relationship built between undergraduate schools and graduate recruiting, a strong relationship with TYC faculty will help identify promising students. The large proportion of women and minorities that take their introductory physics courses at TYCs makes this an excellent place to improve the recruitment and retention of underrepresented persons in physics.

Mary Beth Monroe

(Dept. of Physics, Southwest Texas Junior College, Uvalde, TX 7880, phone (210) 278-4401, e-mail: mbm3@aip.org.)

Karen Castle

(TYC21 Project Manager, AAPT, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3845; phone 301-209-3300, e-mail: kcastle@aapt.acp.org.)