CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – The Austin Peay State University College of Science and Mathematics will host a career fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Feb. 27, in the Morgan University Center Ballroom. The event will allow students to meet with regional employers to discuss career opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

            According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, STEM workers “drive our nation’s innovation and competitiveness by generating new ideas, new companies and new industries. Over the past 10 years, growth in STEM jobs was three times as fast as growth in non-STEM jobs. STEM workers are also less likely to experience joblessness than their non-STEM counterparts.”

            Students are encouraged to dress in business attire and bring a resume to the event. The career fair is sponsored by the APSU College of Science and Mathematics, Career Services, the Office of Undergraduate Research and the Center of Excellence for Field Biology.

            For more information, contact Dr. Lisa Sullivan, associate professor of chemistry, atsullivanl@apsu.edu or 221-7628.

            CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – Earlier this month, a group of Austin Peay State University students and faculty members traveled to Vanderbilt University and made an impressive showing at the Tennessee Academy of Science’s Centennial Meeting.

            During that meeting, which celebrated the 100^th gathering of the state’s top scientific and mathematical minds, several members of the APSU community were recognized for their outstanding work. In the math and computer science competition of the meeting, chaired by APSU associate professor of mathematics Dr. Ben Ntatin, APSU students placed first and second in oral presentations of their research.

            Two groups of APSU students actually tied for the first-place honors. Student Kristen Knight and Dr. Alzaatreh Ayman, assistant professor of mathematics, received one of those first place honors for their presentation, “On the gamma-half normal distribution and its applications.” The other first-place winners were students Liliana M. Alvarez and Anne M. French and associate professor Dr. Ramanjit K. Sahi for their presentation, “Interplay of words with knots through Markov’s chain.”

            APSU student Stephanie Jessie also tied with a team of Belmont University students for second place with her presentation, “Students’ mathematical beliefs – pictures tell the story better.”

            Other APSU students and faculty members who delivered oral presentations at the TAS meeting include:

            • Lucas Johnson, Justin Cook, Reed Curtis, Larry Nelson, Stephen Stone, Donny Peay and Cory Medlin, “The Case of the Smudged Map.”

            • Rachel Balthrop, Elizabeth Dobbs, Jessica Dotson, Michael McAllister, Derek Nobes and Brandy Smith, “A Road Between Two Towns.”

            • Reneice Glasper, Ashley Heinreich, Patrick Shelton and Murphy Rogers, “Population Growth with Migration.”

            • Zaklina Cetic, Sean Cather, Michael Kuwonu, Skylar Sullivan and Justin Cook, “River Pollution.”

            • Preston Mathews, Janica Bolden, Dusty Adkins and Jessica Dobbs, “Effects of Harvesting Deer Population in Tennessee.”

            • Emarus D. Shay and Dr. Ramanjit K. Sahi, associate professor of mathematics, “Friezing Triangulated Polygons.”

            • Sahi and Dr. Samuel Jator, professor of mathematics, “Self Starting Trigonometrically-fitted Second Derivative Method for Orbital Problems.”

            • Dr. Alzaatreh Ayman, assistant professor of mathematics, and Dr. Indranil Ghosh, assistant professor of mathematics, “A Study of Gamma-Pareto (IV) Distribution and its Applications.”

            • Dr. Ben Ntatin, associate professor of mathematics, “Geometry of the Finite Method for Solving Elliptic Partial Differential Equations.”

For more information on APSU’s successful participation at the meeting, contact Ntatin atntatinb@apsu.edu.

            CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – On a recent afternoon, Austin Peay State University psychology student Caitlin Nelms was in the library, checking her email, when she noticed a message sitting in her junk mail folder. It had been there a few days.

           When she clicked on it, the message informed her that she was the sole recipient of a prestigious summer internship offered through the Middle Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Neuroscience’s and Vanderbilt University’s Summer Science Academy.

            “I was in the library, so I was trying not to be loud, but I was really excited,” Nelms said.

            The internship, known as the Summer Enrichment Research Program in Education and Neuroscience Training (SERPENT), will send Nelms to Vanderbilt for two months where she’ll work under a faculty mentor conducting groundbreaking neuroscience research. It’s a good fit for the APSU junior who, over the last year, has developed a fascination with that field.

           “What really spiked my interest was learning about vision and auditory processing, that type thing, but I didn’t want to go into the medical side of it,” she said. “I wanted to do something different.”

            Through neuroscience research, she’ll be able to investigate how individuals are consciously aware of what they’re seeing and what they’re hearing, and how they perceive those sensory responses.

            “The researchers (at Vanderbilt) use different brain imaging techniques, so they see all the different connections,” she said. “They’re researching with animals and humans, with all different types of technology that we don’t have at Austin Peay. It’s very exciting.”

            Nelms already has a bit of experience as a researcher in this field. For the last year, she has worked with Dr. Larry Lowrance, APSU professor of education, and Dr. Jeannine Hirtle, APSU associate professor of education, looking at the relationship of social media use to TCAP writing scores, English grades, school attendance and discipline referrals among high school juniors and seniors. Her contributions to this study have more than impressed Lowrance.

            “Ms. Nelms is more than brilliant,” he said. “She has a mind that grasps concepts intuitively, studies them intensely and is flexible enough to change as new facts and circumstances come her way. She is creative in thought and practice and insightful like few others.”

            His statements might sound exaggerated until you take a look at Nelms’s resume. She was the valedictorian of Bolivar Central High School in Bolivar, Tenn., is a member of the APSU President’s Emerging Leaders Program and its honors program, serves as vice president of the Chi Omega women’s fraternity and is a member of numerous honor societies, including Gamma Beta Phi community service honor society, the Psi Chi psychology honor society and Phi Kappa Phi, the nation’s oldest and largest collegiate honor society.

            Nelms will receive a stipend for her work this summer, and she is required to give a presentation on her research at Vanderbilt and APSU and create a pamphlet for fifth- and sixth-graders describing what she did. She will also add the experience to her growing resume, which will come in handy this fall when she begins applying for graduate programs.

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – In the middle of the night, a little sliver of light shines from the doorway of the observatory in the remote farmland of the Austin Peay State University Environmental Education Center. Inside, maybe with a cup of coffee or a soda to keep her awake, is APSU physics student Katie Boedges, waiting for the Cat’s Eye Nebula to appear in the night sky.

“It rises at 1:30 in the morning, so I’m usually going to be there all night long,” she said.

Her nocturnal visits to the observatory are the result of a major project she is finishing up for the University. Earlier this year, Boedges received a $3,000 Presidential Research Scholars Award to build a spectrometer for the telescope. This is a piece of equipment that measures light of, say, a star or nebulas to determine its composition, density, temperature and host of other things.

Last week, while passing through the hall of the Sundquist Science Building, Boedges nonchalantly mentioned that she’s looking at Cat’s Eye to make sure the spectrometer is working correctly. APSU associate professor of physics Dr. Justin Oelgoetz overheard her.

“She built this! It wasn’t ordered,” he said with a laugh. “Katie doesn’t present it as real flashy, but this is a major project.”

Dr. Alex King, chair of the APSU Department of Physics, agreed with Oelgoetz.

“It gives us a completely new capability,” he said.           

Boedges wrote a proposal last year seeking a PRS grant to build the spectrometer. The Presidential Research Scholars Program presents awards every year to student-faculty teams in support of scholarly and creative activity. Once Boedges, who worked with APSU associate professor of physics and astronomy Dr. Allyn Smith, learned she had received the money, she set to work designing a custom-built instrument that could be attached to the telescope.

“I had to get a person in the Astronomy Club who is also a machinist,” she said. “I consulted with him on what I needed, gave him the measurements and stuff, and he made it. And a lot of parts were donated from downstairs.”

The spectrometer is now attached to the telescope, meaning that Boedges is staying up late looking at stars, planets, the moon and nebula to make sure the spectrometer is working properly.

“I’m really excited,” she said. “We have to fix the secondary mirror, but then we’re just going to continue on with the project as planned.”

Boedges, a senior at APSU, will graduate this May, but the spectrometer she designed and built will remain at the observatory for use by students, faculty and other researchers.

“This is a capability that is new, but it can be used not just for students for educational purposes, but this instrument can be used to take spectra which can then be analyzed and used for research purposes,” Oelgoetz said.

For more information on this spectrometer, contact the APSU Department of Physics at 221-6116.

APSU physics students Drew Kerr (left) and Mason Yost are recipients of the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship this year. (Photo by Beth Liggett/APSU).

Harvard University had a couple of students receive prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships this year. So did MIT and Princeton. Another school on that list to have an unprecedented two students receive scholarships was Austin Peay State University, with physics majors Drew Kerr and Mason Yost.

“The Goldwater Scholarship is for rising juniors and seniors, and it’s very competitive and prestigious,” Dr. Matthew Kenney, APSU political science associate professor and the University’s Goldwater Scholarship representative, said. “It carries with it a $7,500 scholarship.”

Last Wednesday, Kerr received a phone call from his friend and classmate Yost about the award. Both had applied for the scholarship named for the late Arizona senator and 1964 presidential candidate, which is awarded each year to only 300 college students nationwide who are pursing a degree in science or mathematics.

“I kept checking the website for our names,” Yost said. “I was hoping at least one of us would make it. When I saw our names, I called Drew.”

Kerr had a busy week, preparing a presentation for a conference he was going to attend, so he hadn’t had a chance to check the Goldwater Scholarship website.

“I got a call from Mason,” he said. “I hadn’t checked since Monday. I kept saying, ‘Mason, you’re joking with me.’”

But he wasn’t joking. Their names were on the list among the other recipients from institutions such as Yale and Duke University. Only five Goldwater Scholarships were awarded to students attending schools in Tennessee. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville, the University of Memphis and Middle Tennessee State University each had one student earn the scholarship.

“There aren’t that many schools that get two scholarships,” Dr. Alex King, chair of the APSU physics department, said. “For us to have two students both get it, that’s really cool. They both worked really hard to get it. And I’m particularly jazzed that they’re both physics majors.”

When awarding the scholarships, a selection committee looks through thousands of applications and singles out those individuals who are working to make a significant contribution to his or her field of study.

It can be an arduous application process, which takes into account all the work and research students have done during their college careers. As APSU associate professor of physics Dr. Justin Oelgoetz said, students don’t simply decide one day to apply for the Goldwater Scholarship. It is something they must prepare for throughout their time at the University in order to have a shot at the award.

Kerr’s application included an analysis of particle decay research he conducted last summer and hopes to continue. Yost submitted a literature review he helped work on with APSU physics department faculty, analyzing quantum systems using acoustic networks.

Both students first came to APSU in the summer of 2008 as high school students attending the Governor’s School in Computational Physics. Yost was later accepted into Carnegie Mellon University and Kerr considered attending the University of Chicago. But King and Dr. Jaime Taylor, dean of the College of Science and Mathematics, persuaded the two students to enroll at APSU.

“I told them when they applied here they would have more opportunities at Austin Peay than they would at those other schools,” Taylor, former chair of physics, said. “And that has proven to be true. I think these two individuals are examples of the caliber of students that are choosing APSU. They make me miss being in the physics department, interacting with these kinds of students on a daily basis.”

For more information on the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, contact Kenney at kenneym@apsu.edu or King at kinga@apsu.edu.

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – The art world, it turns out, can use a good physicist. When it comes to restoring priceless works, identifying forgeries or discovering long lost masterpieces painted over centuries ago, curators at the world’s top museums and galleries turn to their colleagues in the sciences for help.

This summer, officials at the Louvre Museum in Paris might look to Austin Peay State University physics student Drew Kerr to assist them in making discoveries about the famed works in their collection.

“The focus of their research is on studying art restoration and analyzing things for authenticity, looking for damage and things of that sort,” Kerr said.

He’ll be traveling to France this summer with faculty from the University of Michigan as part of the prestigious Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program “Modern Optics in the City of Lights.” Specific research projects have not yet been assigned, but one of the opportunities includes working with Louvre officials.

The REU program, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, provides grant money for undergraduate students to participate in innovative new research. Thousands of college students apply each year in different disciplines, with only a select few receiving the coveted REU Awards.

For the last several years, the APSU Department of Physics has actively pushed for its students to apply for the program. Dr. Alex King, department chair, said the experiences students receive through this program will help them with their future career choices.

“We do computational physics and some observational astronomy research here (at Austin Peay), and we’re building a focus in experimental and computational materials science,” King said. “If the students don’t want to do one of those things, the idea is they should find what they might be interested in doing for graduate school or for a career, find a school that does exactly that thing and go try it for the summer.”

That’s exactly what interested Kerr about the opportunity in France.

“It was important for me to look for an opportunity that isn’t as readily available at Austin Peay,” he said. “That isn’t to say that our department is lacking in any way. It’s just the nature of this opportunity in Paris, a different type of research.”

Kerr will be one of only 13 undergraduate students from across the country going to Paris this summer to perform research at places such as the Louvre using ultrafast lasers. According to the University of Michigan’s website, “Students in this program will experience strong collaborative science that is currently taking place between University of Michigan (UM) Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (CUOS), Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Nationale de Techniques Avancées (ENSTA), Université Paris-Sud 11 Orsay, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, the Louvre, and l’Institut d' Optique Graduate School.”

“What’s really important about these REUs, is that it takes us out of the classroom and shows us that what we’re learning is used,” he said. “But what it’s really showing me is what types of things are focused on in the world, as far as physics is concerned.”

For more information on Kerr or his REU experience, contact the APSU physics department at 221-6116.

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PHOTO CUTLINE: APSU student Drew Kerr working with a Raman Spectrometer in the APSU Sundquist Science Complex’s laser lab. (Photo by Beth Liggett/APSU staff)