Jennifer Carson holds a PhD in astrophysics from UCLA, an MS in physics from SFSU, and a BS. in physics from MIT. She has taught college physics for twenty years at a range of institutions, from elite private colleges to community colleges. Before beginning her teaching career, she worked in several areas of astrophysical research, including studies of high-redshift active galaxies at radio, rest-frame-optical, and gamma-ray wavelengths. As a post-doctoral researcher, she contributed to the development and science goals for the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope at Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She has published over a dozen articles in peer-reviewed astrophysical journals and presented her research nationally and internationally. Carson’s prior STEM outreach experience includes managing the Information Science Hall at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.
Carson also holds an MFA in creative writing and literature from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Science, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Her first novel, “The Savage Path,” is currently on submission at several publishing houses. In 2020, she founded the literary organization To the Lighthouse, where she facilitates book clubs, teaches close-reading, and hosts author events and literary retreats. She enjoys straddling the divide between science and literature, between the analytical and the affective.
Throughout my physics academic training and career, I was guided by wonderful mentors. These include my high school calculus and physics teachers, advanced mechanics professor at MIT, Masters thesis advisor, E&M professor at SFSU, dissertation advisor at UCLA, and post-doc research advisor at SLAC. I should have a plaque on my office wall commemorating each of these individuals, because they are as pivotal to my career as the degrees I earned. Almost no one in my family had any interest in or knowledge of science, so these mentors provided the guidance I could not get from my family.
I decided to pivot from research to teaching in 2007, and more recently from teaching to directing NPS' STEM programs, because I wanted to influence and encourage STEM hopefuls as I was encouraged. In every academic profession, we pay it forward, supporting the next generation as we ourselves were supported. This position at NPS, in particular, allows me to reach hundreds, maybe even thousands, of talented students at different academic stages and usher them along the path toward a STEM career.
NPS has a long tradition of engaging with the local community. A couple of decades ago, NPS began to open the campus once a year to K-12 students for a day of STEM activities. Since those early years, the event has grown into a formalized Discovery Day that attracts as many as 2000 students and their teachers. After a hiatus during the pandemic, we hosted our last Discovery Day in the spring of 2022. The next Discovery Day is tentatively planned for the fall of 2025. We'll have hands-on activities, demonstrations, lab tours, and STEM discussions with experts, with offerings for every age.
I am also developing new relationships with local school districts and community organizations to offer student group visits to NPS. This week, we're hosting a group of middle and high school students from military families for two afternoons of STEM activities. They'll build a speaker, program a robot, fly a drone, play VR military games, and 3-D print a model plane. We have other student groups scheduled for the late spring and summer, and I'm actively recruiting groups for half-day visits.
The Rapid Innovation Design Challenge is a STEM competition led by NPS faculty to challenge teams of middle and high school students to propose solutions to some of the Navy's most difficult technical challenges, such as autonomous storm tracking and sea level rise. The teams study all aspects of the problem, design and build prototypes, and present their solutions in oral presentations and slides shows.
We also have partnerships with both Monterey Peninsula College and Hartnell College to provide STEM internships to their students. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement, in which the colleges fund the internships and NPS faculty provide the research experience and mentorship. We expect to have 20-30 students from these schools participate in internships this year.
Our outreach programs not only encourage kids to continue on a STEM career path generally, they expose kids to specific STEM career paths in the military. In the case of efforts like the Design Challenge, the defense relevance is central to the program's conception. However, every activity we lead with kids includes a discussion of the relevance of the activity to real-world research in general and naval/military research in particular. Also, NPS graduate students volunteer as activity facilitators, lab tour guides, and intern mentors, thus serving as role models for STEM careers in the military. Finally, by visiting NPS campus, whether for a one-day visit or as an intern, students are exposed to a working naval research facility. We hope that an interaction with "STEM @ NPS" opens students' minds to the many different ways they can do STEM work within the DOD.
We are working with the DOD's Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) on one outreach effort and one new internship. We hope to pilot a free camp for community college students using a ready-made STEM-in-a-Box curriculum and kit provided by CDAO. We are also serving as a pilot site for a new AI-focused CDAO internship for college students.
As an advanced research institution, I believe we should have a robust student internship program. This summer, our internship program has expanded significantly and will include ~70-80 students from several different avenues, including the community college ones mentioned above and the Office of Naval Research's SEAP and NREIP programs. I am excited to continue to grow these offerings and involve more research faculty in them.
I am also excited about expanding the STEM outreach program and reestablishing an expansive and well-run Discovery Day.
Internships are essential to students pursuing STEM careers. Students need the competitive advantage an internship offers when moving from high school to college or college to graduate studies. They are also the student's only opportunity to apply their classroom learning to real-world research. They are an invaluable window into the reality of a STEM career, and as such, for many students they catalyze interest in a STEM career far more effectively than classroom assignments.
I see a growing demand for expertise in AI, robotics, advanced manufacturing, and climate science. However, there is demand for technical expertise in every STEM field!
One especially rewarding aspect of this job is representing and promoting the incredible research being performed at NPS. It is a constant pleasure to meet the NPS faculty and find out about their research projects. Recruiting interns, for instance, is so much fun, because I am confident in the quality of the experience, they can have at NPS. Another aspect that is especially rewarding is the opportunity to reach so many more students than I could as a classroom professor. Between K-12 outreach, student internships, and Discovery Day, I can have a hand in reaching a few thousand students every year. Combined with the efforts of the other DOD/DON STEM officers across the country, I hope we can reach enough students to move the needle, toward a bigger and better-trained STEM workforce.
