Education, Community Engagement and Public Outreach Efforts in the Miller Lab at The University of Chicago
Our group is highly engaged in the local community, and coordinates or participates in programs that benefit many segments of our neighborhood and community including elementary, high school, and the broader public.
Fermi Summer Interns Program
One week every summer on the UChicago campus. More information at hep-outreach.uchicago.edu
Each year approximately 20 incoming 7th grade students from schools near Hyde Park participate in the Enrico Fermi Summer Internship at the University of Chicago. The internship includes lectures led by university professors, laboratory experiments to apply concepts learned in lectures, and web design for communicating accomplishments to the world. Students will learn about science, computers, and electronics in a fun way, and will build electronic games and devise their own experiments to test scientific concepts.
Warrior-Scholars Project
Empowering veterans in the classroom.
The Warrior-Scholars Project is an amazing program that helps veterans transition to college. The University of Chicago has been participating in the Humanities and STEM Boot Camps as part of WSP since 2015. The first week of the program is typically a humanities academic boot camp, which includes daily seminars taught by campus professors who are leaders in their field, readings and analysis of challenging texts on the tradition of American democracy, and morning discussions on each reading in preparation for seminars, writing workshops, and assignments. The second week prepares service members and veterans for the challenges and rigor of a STEM bachelor’s degree program. Using a physics-based curriculum, veterans and service members will gain skills to help them succeed with their transition from the military to higher education. During this two-week boot camp, students are taught by professors from our partner college and mentored by peers who have completed the program and successfully transitioned to college.
Chicago Public Schools Engagement
Ongoing efforts at local CPS Elementary Schools: Bret Harte Elementary
In collaboration with local elementary schools such as Bret Harte Elementary, we conduct in class lectures, participate in Career Day activities, and even offer Virtual Visits to the experiments that are part of the LHC.
LHC Masterclass
Spring every year at local CPS High Schools: Kenwood Academy
We participate in the International Masterclasses program for high energy physics. Each year more than 13,000 high school students in over 60 countries come to one of about 225 nearby universities or research centres for one day in order to unravel the mysteries of particle physics. Lectures from active scientists give insight in topics and methods of basic research at the fundaments of matter and forces, enabling the students to perform measurements on real data from particle physics experiments themselves. At the end of each day, like in an international research collaboration, the participants join in a video conference for discussion and combination of their results.