GAANN Fellowship Program in the Department of Physics at the University of Kentucky

This proposal requests funding for a three-year GAANN fellowship program in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kentucky. We request funding for four Department of Education GAANN fellows to be supplemented with an additional matching fellowship that will be provided by funding from the UK Graduate School, College of Arts and Sciences, and Department of Physics and Astronomy. The support will enable us to recruit, enroll, educate and graduate talented students with demonstrated financial need with PhD. degrees in Physics. The fellowship program will address the national and state need for a highly-trained physics workforce - especially in such areas as condensed matter and nuclear physics - that is central to our needs in education, energy, health, safety and security. Specific steps are proposed to use the fellowships to increase enrollment and improve the representation in physics of individuals from traditionally underrepresented including women, African- and Hispanic-Americans, and students from Appalachia. The Department of Physics and Astronomy at UK is the only comprehensive Ph.D. granting physics program in Kentucky. The Department has 29 regular faculty members, 12 post-doctoral researchers and approximately 70 graduate students. Over recent years, nine new faculty hires in nuclear physics, condensed matter physics and astrophysics have reinvigorated the Department. The Department has vigorous research programs in five areas: astro-, atomic, condensed matter, nuclear and particle physics. Experimental research is conducted in on-campus facilities that include the Van de Graaf Accelerator Laboratory and Center for Advanced Materials as well as numerous national and international laboratories. Theoretical and computational research utilizes both the University's Lipscomb High Performance Computing Cluster and national supercomputing centers. A primary outcome that is expected of our GAANN fellowship program is the training of talented students to PhD-level in physics to address the work-force need in areas including education, energy, health, safety and security. Another primary outcome is an increase in the representation of women, African- and Hispanic-Americans, and students from Appalachia in the physics community. Both outcomes address important needs for a diverse, technologically-trained, workforce in Kentucky. The University will make a matching contribution of 31.7% to the GAAN fellowship program. The match will provide support including tuition and fees for an additional fellowship over the 3-year duration of the GAANN program. The proposed GAANN fellowship project will be coordinated by the GAANN project director T. Gorringe together with a GAANN advisory committee including three additional faculty members. The project director is the Director of Graduate Studies in Physics and Astronomy. and the advisory committee members include the Chairs of the Department Graduate Admissions and Graduate Recruiting committees. All personnel have extensive experience in graduate student recruiting admission, advising and research mentoring.