Diversity in Action

SciGirls, a summer camp sponsored in part by the Magnet Lab, offers girls hands-on experiences with chemistry, physics and other sciences.

Efforts at building diversity are found across the Mag Lab. Below are some of the programs spearheaded or sponsored by the lab that are drawing more women and other underrepresented groups to science and engineering. Links in blue will lead you to more details about some of these programs.

College Outreach - Workforce Initiative
(CO-WIN)
The Magnet Lab proudly offers this program, a series of lectures designed to promote diversity in future generations of scientists, engineers and educators.

Dependent Care Travel Grant Program

Subject to the availability of funding, the Magnet Lab offers small grants up to a maximum of $800 per calendar year for qualified short-term dependent care expenses incurred by early-career scientists. Read more.

Open Doors Lab
This lab, completed in 2007, provides space for underrepresented students, post-docs and young faculty to do research in collaboration with the Magnet Lab's Extreme Conditions Group. The Open Doors Lab is a crystal growth and characterization facility with a 16-tesla Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS), furnaces for crystal growth, and a powder X-ray diffractometer. This equipment is important to early-career researchers and their graduate students because it allows them to perform initial measurements that justify experiments in higher magnetic fields. Current users of the Open Doors Lab include Professor Kevin Storr with Prairie View A&M University, who is working on heavy fermion materials; Professor James Dickerson of Vanderbilt, who is working on nanoparticle systems; and Susan Latturner, who is working on characterizing materials with thermoelectric applications.

Regional Institute for Math & Science
In this partnership with Florida A&M University, the Mag Lab invites several high school students participating in the school's RIMS program to conduct two-week research projects in the lab.

Research Experiences for Teachers
Preference in this six-week professional development program for teachers is given to those who work with underserved or underrepresented students.

Research Experiences for Undergraduates
This summer internship program matches qualified undergraduate students with scientists and researchers at the Magnet Lab's three sites. This intense eight-week program attracts a high percentage of minority and women.

SciGirls Summer Camp
A unique opportunity for girls heading into 8th, 9th or 10th grades, this summer camp offers participants engaging ways to explore science at a variety of Tallahassee-area sites.

Undergraduate Research Fellowships
Apart from the summer Research Experience for Undergraduates program, the lab's diversity program funds year-round undergraduate research fellowships to students from underrepresented groups. The students work in a research group at one of the lab's three branches: Florida State University, University of Florida or Los Alamos National Lab. To date, two such fellowships have been awarded. Research opportunities outside the REU program also are available for summer students at the three sites. For more information, contact Dragana Popovic.

Women in Math, Science & Engineering Mentorship (WIMSE)
The lab provides funding for semester-long research fellowships for WIMSE-affiliated undergraduates at Florida State University.

For more information, please contact Dragana Popovic, Director of the Diversity Program.