II. Detailed Report
B.2 Diversity and Broadening Participation, Institutional Collaborations:
B2.1 Broadening Participation
Table 1 summarizes the composition of the Alliance for Year 2. We have increase the number of minorities and women in most of the categorie as it is displayed in Table 1. The Diversity Advisory Council (DAC, Strategy 1) met on August 6, 2011 to provide feedback to the EEWD Committee. The DAC suggested that the Industrial Liaison Team needed to add a member from an HBCU. Rachel Cruthirds (from Xavier) has joined.
Table 1. Summary of the RII Totals from Appendix B of this and last year report.
Year Two / Year OneMale / Fem. / Blacks / Hisp. / Male / Fem. / Blacks / Hisp.
Faculty / 83.6% / 16.4% / 8.2% / 5%
Tech. staff / 66.7% / 33.3% / 16.6% / 16.6%
Supp. staff / 18.2% / 81.8% / 18.2% / 9.1%
Post docs / 77.7% / 11.1% / 0% / 0%
Graduates / 73% / 24.3% / 10.8% / 4%
Underg. / 57.1% / 36.5% / 28.6% / 1.6%
Leaders. / 100% / 0% / 0% / 0%
Ad. Boards / - / - / - / -
The DAC also suggested that LA-SIGMA faculty advertise to GEM scholars. The EEWD committee drafted a recruitment letter and sent it to the 2012 GEM list. In addition all the postdoctoral, graduate, REU and RET positions has been advertised in the Institute for Broadening Participations (IBP). Two graduate students have been awarded supplemental research assistantships for women and URM students. Funds to supplement department start-up packages (Strategy 3) to recruit new URM and female faculty members have been used at Tulane to recruit Dr. Anne Robinson from the University of Delaware and at LA Tech to recruit Dr. Erica Murray, an African-American female and Research Assistant Professor at IfM. The LA-SiGMA outreach coordinator has contacted the program leaders and collected information for existing 3+2 and 4+1 programs in the state with the goal of creating pipelines (Strategy 4) for students to LA-SiGMA institutions. One student transferred from Xavier to Tulane and joined LA-SiGMA, is majoring in Biomedical Engineering, and will graduate in 2013.
B2.2 Institutional Collaborations
Within the state of Louisiana, LA-SiGMA participants collaborate with 17 people from seven number of institutions, two of these collaborators are from a HCBU institution, and two from industry, the rest are from four academic research institutions. Compared to Y1, we almost doubled the number of collaborators, and we added collaborations from industry.
Ongoing Milestones for Strategic Plan for Year 2:
(1) Hold Annual DAC Meetings-Second Annual Meeting planned for July 23, 2012. (2-3) Reach 30% women and 15% URM graduate students within the Alliance by Y3 – ACTUAL: Year 2: 24.3% female graduate students, 15% URM graduate students. (4) Recruit at least 5 students through pipelines described in proposal by end of Year 2 – ACTUAL: 1 student.
B.3 Workforce Development:
Strategy 1 – Outreach to Middle/High Schools: Open House events have been held at LA Tech/Grambling University and LSU, with 70 and over 1000 students attending, respectively. Tulane plans to hold an Open House in Fall 2012. Dr. Grayson (Tulane) has undergraduate students working with Edna Karr High School (Title I school) to develop a Chemistry AP program. LA-SiGMA partly sponsors the Beowulf Boot Camp at LSU with 37 high school students, four high school teachers, and two community college faculty attending. One graduating student from the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts will participate in the LA Tech REU program, and one high school students is joining the LSU REU program. Ten LA-SiGMA investigators delivered lectures at K-12 schools about research and/or science and engineering throughout the year.
Strategy 2 – Research Experiences for Teachers (RET): For the summer of 2012, five teachers have been selected at LSU's, three at Southern University, three at Tulane, and five at LA Tech/GSU. Of the sixteen teachers, ten are male, two are URM. They teach at a mix of public and private schools, and three of the teachers are faculty members at the Louisiana School for the Math Science and the Arts. The teachers will conduct research in LA-SiGMA faculty members' labs, attend professional development workshops and seminars, and present their research findings at the end of each program. A follow up survey from Year One RET participants was conducted in April 2012.
Strategy 3 – Community Colleges: On October 14, 2011, twenty Community College teachers attended LA Tech short course in Advanced Microscopy Techniques. One instructor and one student from Baton Rouge Community College will attend the Beowulf Boot Camp at LSU and help assess the curriculum from the perspective of community colleges. Two community college students are participating in the REU program-one at LSU and one at SUBR. Two community college faculty members are participating in the RET program as well.
Strategy 4 – Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU): LA-SiGMA provides six different sites and numerous projects for the REU students. They are recruited using the Institute for Broadening Participation, the XSEDE users’ list and homepage, Shodor webpage, etc. The students work on cutting edge research in material sciences and computational tools and learn how to use the most current cyberinfrastructure tools with individually designed training sessions. In addition, since most LA-SiGMA research groups collaborate with international researchers, REU students are exposed to how international collaborations work. For the summer of 2012, 25 students have been selected (5 at LSU, 5 at LA Tech, 4 at Tulane, 4 at SUBR, 5 at UNO, 2 at Xavier). A follow up survey from Year One REU participants was conducted in April 2012.
Strategy 5 – Graduate Students: Workshops and graduate level courses are broadcast to interested LA-SiGMA institutions using HD synchronous video technology. Two Courses were offered during Fall 2011: Statistical Mechanics (instructor Hall from LSU, broadcast to LA Tech with 20 students attending); and Solid State Physics (instructor Ruzsinsky from Tulane, broadcast to LSU, with 7 students attending). Three courses were offered during Spring 2012: Computational Physics (instructor Moreno from LSU, broadcast to LaTech and Bangalore, India, 24 students); Many-body Theory (instructor Jarrell, broadcast to Bangalore, Zurich and Julich, with 25 attending); 3D+ Visualization (instructor Butler from LSU, broadcast to LA Tech, with 16 students attending). In addition, LA-SiGMA sponsor the participation of its students and postdocs in numerous workshops including the Mardi Gras conference, a Shodor workshop, LONI HPC Parallel Programming Workshop at LSU, the Inaugural LONI HPC User Symposium, the Virtual School of Computational Science and Engineering workshops, and the first in the state NWChem Workshop.
Strategy 6 – Postdocs Professional Development: Cynthia Sisson and Stephanie Aamodt at LSU-Shreveport have developed a best-practice teaching workshop for postdocs and senior level graduate students based on the Michigan State’s FIRST program (Faculty Institute for Reforming Science Teaching). The FIRST program in Michigan is focused on life sciences, so Drs. Sisson and Aamodt are customizing a program for LA-SiGMA; the first workshop will be held in July 2012. Participants will attend remotely via HD video.
Ongoing Milestones from Strategic Plan:
Strategy 1: Increased Attendees at Open House Events-The Open House events had increased attendance over Year One. Over 1,000 people attended the events.
Strategy 2: 20 RET Participants each year- There are 16 RET participants this year. The recruiting strategies will be changed next year to attract a larger number of qualified applicants.
Strategy 3:
· Expansion of Short Courses in Year 2- The first Short Course was held at LA Tech in Year One; community college faculty found it very informative, LA-SiGMA plans to hold Short Courses in each area during the Fall of 2012.
· Five two-year college participants in Beowulf Bootcamp – The decision was made to assess the course this summer to determine if modifications to the content were needed to better align it with the needs of community college students.
· Expansion of 2+2 and other programs by Year 3 – One student recruited to date.
Strategy 4: 30 REU participants each year – 50% will pursue higher education. A follow up survey of 2011 REU participants was conducted in April 2012. The number of participants who indicated they were very likely to pursue at Ph.D. in a Science field increased by 17% after the REU. The number of participants who indicated they were very likely to pursue a career in research or a career in a STEM field increased by 34% and 23%, respectively.
Strategy 5: Five videoconference courses offered with ?? students attending. Incorporation into graduate curricula on two campuses by Y2 – The LA Tech graduate program has been approved by the Louisiana Board of Regents. The LSU/SUBR/UNO program is on hold, pending revisions requested by the Regents. Ramu needs to fact-check this
Strategy 6: Effective Teaching Workshops scheduled for July 2012 with 22 invited participants.
Eight graduate students and four postdocs at LSU traveled to attend 15 national and international conferences, and three students and one postdoc traveled to universities and national labs to engage on collaborative research. Two of the students had an extended stay at a national lab of at least one month. One student and one postdoc attended a winter school in the US, and will be attending an autumn school abroad.
B.5 Outreach and Communication:
B5.1 Public Lectures and Events: LA-SiGMA faculty and graduate students from Louisiana State University participated in two Baton Rouge area's NanoDays events (Strategy 1) at BREC's Highland Road Observatory (125 visitors) and the Louisiana Arts and Science Museum (400 guests). LSU LA-SiGMA also participated in Super Science Saturday with over 1,000 people attending. Dr. Bagayoko (SUBR) presented a talk at the AAPT Summer Meeting in Philadelphia, and also at the New Physics Faculty Workshop, APS Headquarters, College Park, MD. LA-SiGMA created a web portal (Strategy 2) for distribution of the project deliverables (http://institute.loni.org/lasigma). LA-SiGMA has also created a repository and version control system (Strategy 3) for code development and distribution. Dr. Bishop (LA Tech) and Brad Burkman (RET) had been selected by the LittleFe project (http://www.littlefe.org/) to receive mini-supercomputers. The computers are being used in various outreach events and in teaching. Many of LA-SiGMA faculty, students and postdocs participated in the NSF/LA EPSCoR sponsored workshop on Science: Becoming the Messenger.
B5.2 HD Synchronous Video (Strategy 4): LA-SiGMA is currently in negotiation with vendors to order required HD hardware. The Board of Regents has pledged funds to leverage LA-SiGMA funds and purchase is planned for summer 2012.
B5.3 Newsletter/Brochures/Highlights (Strategy 5): LA-SiGMA has created a professional brochure, as well as several brochures for specific events, like the REU and RET programs. LA-SiGMA has also created a facebook page to post pictures and update members about events. Highlights have been prepared for distribution to NSF. LA-SiGMA has been mentioned once in the LA EPSCoR newsletter.
B5.4 Formal Mechanisms (Strategies 6 and 8): An all-hands meeting was held April 2, 2012. A second all-hands meeting has been scheduled on July 23, 2012. The NSF program officer, the External Review Board, the Diversity Advisory Council, and the Industrial Liaison Team will attend the second meeting.
B5.5 International and National Collaborations (Strategy 7): LA-SiGMA researchers collaborate with 30 people at 27 different institutions in the US. Half of those collaborators come from 14 academic research institutions, eight from five different national laboratories (Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, NIST, and Sandia), four from industry (Absorption Systems, Inc., Agilent Nanomeasurements division,
Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Ford Motor Company), two from HBCUs (Howard and Florida A&M Universities), and one from a primarily undergraduate institution (Hillsdale College). At an international level, seven collaborators come from different universities in Germany, India, and Belgium, and two from laboratories abroad (UK and Thailand). Compared to Y1, in Y2 we observed a moderate increase in the number of collaborators, but we saw a sharp increase in the number of institutions. We added another collaborator at the international level.
Milestones for Y2 in External Engagement:
Strategy 1:
· Three LA-SiGMA researchers have appeared on TV/radio to discuss their research or science and engineering in general.
· At least one public lecture delivered each quarter: LA-SiGMA researchers delivered 15 public lectures this year.
· At least one lecture delivered to industrial audiences each quarter: Four LA-SiGMA investigators delivered lectures to industrial audiences this year.
Strategy 2: Web traffic increases 20% annually- In the period of January 1, 2012 to June 6, 2012, the LA-SiGMA webpage received 1,564 visits, 64% of those were new visitors, 38% of the visitors were from Baton Rouge, 10% from New Orleans, and 8% from Ruston, Louisiana. At the moment we don't have another period to which we can compare these statistics, but we will be able to compare statistics starting Y2.
Strategy 3: SVN maintained and upgraded in Y2-5; 100 code downloads per year starting Y3. The software page received 72 visits, with about 70% of new visitors. Twelve different people clicked on the links that take them to the software page of ManyJobs and BigJob where they can download the software.
Strategy 4: Spending freezes and change in IT personnel have delayed the purchase of the equipment.
Strategy 5:
· At least two LASiGMA highlights featured in LA EPSCoR newsletter each year. Only one newsletter featured a LA-SiGMA researcher John Perdew. The newsletter wasn’t published for months because the EPSCoR office didn’t have a PR person.
· At least one story picked up by regional/national press: Nanodays was picked. Four LA-SiGMA investigators indicated that a story about his or her LA-SiGMA work was picked up by the national or regional press.
Strategy 6: Regular interactions with NSF, at least three research highlights reported to NSF annually: Eight research highlights were submitted to NSF.
Strategy 7: At least one LA-SiGMA faculty and at least one student will visit and work in an international lab for one or more weeks each year. Nine LA-SiGMA faculty and seven LA-SiGMA students visited and worked in international labs.
Strategy 8: Full participation in biannual meetings. Ninety-three LA-SiGMA participants attended the April 2012 meeting.