Submitted by Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science
Earlham College, Richmond, IN
Last updated July 6th, 1998
Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science currently support a number of relatively small programs which involve students with local businesses and governmental agencies within Wayne County. It has been shown that students who participate in these programs are more likely to stay in Indiana after graduation than those who don't. It has also been shown that our graduates have had a positive effect on the continued development of the local technology industry and local government's information management infrastructure.
The physical and computing facilities shared by Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science in Dennis Hall are elderly and lacking in many necessary capabilities. In order to formalize and expand the current programs and develop the new initiatives outlined below we are applying to Lilly Endowment's Capital Improvement Program for a grant of $xxx,xxx for the renovations and equipment described below.
Each of these programs involves students and faculty working together in various ways. Many of them also involve local businesses and govermental entities.
Summary of the statistics.
In general we plan to expand our internship programs along the lines of our curriculum and research areas. We have also identified research projects which will give our students the necessary skills to pursue careers in technical fields and graduate study in those areas. The new initiatives are:
All of our existing programs will be enhanced by the workspace and computational improvements.
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Coursework and yearly national contest, hope to provide students with opportunities to use modeling skills in governmental and commercial settings.
Study of the formation and evolution of active galactic nuclei. Active galactic nuclei are believed to be supermassive black holes at the center of large galaxies which are accreting matter and explosively emitting energy in a fashion which makes them the most violent and energetic objects in the universe.
We do our research by building models for the formation and evolution of these objects and then testing our models for consistency with observed data for the distance and luminosity of AGN's. We use empirical data from earth-orbitting X-ray telescopes and make model calculations which require as much processor speed as possible.
To date six Earlham students have presented posters on this research at three different conferences during the years 1994 and 1995. We expect this research to be a continuing and ongoing effort as new data becomes available with the launch of the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics facility (a major new X-ray telescope) by NASA later this year. This work was supported by a three-year grant from NASA during 1992-1995.
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In general we plan to expand our internship programs along the lines of our curriculum and research areas. We have also identified research projects which will give our students the necessary skills to pursue careers in technical fields and graduate study in those areas. The new initiatives are:
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Our existing programs will be improved in the following ways by these improvements: