Devin Kodsi, 2023 APS Education & Diversity Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: University of Alabama

My name is Devin Kodsi, and I will be serving as the Education & Diversity Intern this summer at APS. I am a rising senior at the University of Alabama studying Aerospace Engineering and Physics with a minor in Social Innovation & Leadership. I am from Signal Mountain, Tennessee, where my love for physics originated during my time in the International Baccalaureate physics curriculum. I have ensured the development of this passion through my undergraduate studies and research, and I plan to continue my educational endeavors by pursuing a master’s degree in both Business Administration and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Alabama.

As an undergraduate, I have had the opportunity to take part in a variety of organizations to broaden my own experiences. I have continued my marching band-related interests through my membership in the Million Dollar Band over the past 3 years and have served as an ambassador for the university’s Honors College and STEM and CREATE Path to the MBA program. To ensure that students feel both safe and welcome on campus, I have also worked as a Residential Advisor since my sophomore year. My physics research entails working with graduate students in the realm of galaxy mergers, specifically observing the effects on the star formation of post-merger systems. And my real-world engineering knowledge has drastically developed through the past two summers working at AdTech Ceramics in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I worked to contribute toward and improve the company’s manufacturing process.

Some of my most pivotal experiences at the University of Alabama involve the University Fellows Experience and the Blackburn Institute. Both have allowed me to engage with the surrounding community of Tuscaloosa and the state of Alabama, shaping my perspective into one marked by the importance of inclusivity and a diversity of thought. Furthermore, my growth as a servant leader and agent of change can be significantly contributed to my membership in both organizations. As an SPS intern, I plan to utilize and continue expanding upon this blend of knowledge and experiences over the course of the summer, and I am excited to contribute toward the mission of the program!

Internship

Host: American Physical Society

Project

Abstract

Physics and STEM education continues to have underrepresentation by individuals with marginalized gender, racial, and ethnic identities. As an intern for the American Physical Society, I worked with Dr. Christine O’Donnell to analyze demographics of higher education degrees in physics and STEM. I used the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to collect data for degree completions disaggregated by gender, race, and ethnicity as defined by the database. My work included updating eighteen of the “Physics Graphs & Statistics” and nineteen “Top Educators” tables for APS webpages. Furthermore, I carried out an additional analysis on the effects of using an updated definition for “STEM” that is more consistent with the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), and other groups. The new definition introduced fields with a higher fraction of degrees awarded to women, including Agricultural Sciences and Psychology, leading to greater female representation in STEM degrees. Overall, my work throughout the summer will help drive changes that support diverse students in science education.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week 1: Introduction to the SPS Intern Program (Discovering D.C. and MacBook Pros)

This first week has certainly flown by! The interns were able to get together for dinner Monday night before orientation at a restaurant named Tonic, where we got to learn more about one another before our initiation into the program. We began on Tuesday with our intern orientation, taking about an hour’s commute to the American Center for Physics building in College Park. We were introduced to several individuals such as Brad Conrad, Kayla Stephens, Andrew Zeidell, Mikayla Cleaver, and James Taylor. We had quite an interesting time with our marshmallow-spaghetti tower icebreaker at the beginning of orientation, and I’ll just say that our team would have won if not for another group’s desire to add two extra minutes to the previously allocated time. During orientation, the interns learned about the mission of SPS and Sigma Pi Sigma in addition to the best “mentee” and networking practices. Personally, I was really energized and motivated by the orientation and was ready to start tackling the work of my internship. Or was that energy simply stemming from the free breakfast and lunch so generously provided by our directors? We might never truly know.

After orientation, I along with the two other APS interns remained in the building to begin our IT training and set up our brand new organizational MacBook Pros. Due to my extensive experience with Windows in both my middle, high school, and college years, I am facing a bit of a learning curve to better understand the workings of these foreign devices. However, every day I feel a bit more comfortable with these computers, but I still have a while before I feel completely confident in my skills with this relatively alien landscape of a machine. After the IT meeting, the APS interns were able to meet their mentors through a Zoom call. This meeting allowed us to gain a general insight into the expectations of our positions and how we would work with our mentors. At the end of the day, the interns decided to watch the sunset behind the Lincoln Memorial. While the sunset was absolutely stunning, I sometimes found myself admiring the dozens of planes flying overhead from Reagan National Airport.

Wednesday was more or less a complete 180 from Tuesday. Since my APS internship is a virtual program, I am able to conduct all of my meetings and work from the George Washington dorm room. I continued our IT meeting in the morning and quickly hopped on to an HR meeting, where I along with the other APS interns was introduced to the APS organizational structure. I was also able to meet again with my mentor to further discuss the plan for the upcoming weeks, specifically detailing my focus for the summer and the expectations of our work relationship. We ironed out how I would begin by working on updating all of the informational APS graphs and spreadsheets located on their website: https://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/ . This is due to the annual updating of federal data, from which APS is able to create such models of annual educational trends. We further discussed the creation of a marketing plan with APS to promote the data provided by the organization and better educate the general public. For the long term, we additionally talked about the reorganization of the Excel documents found on the website to increase their comprehensibility. Throughout the week, I met with my mentor each day to work on better understanding such roles and responsibilities, and I was able to pick back up where the past intern Lucy Corthell left off by beginning to update the data of each Excel spreadsheet. At the end of the week after taking a look through and updating various Excel spreadsheets for 2021, my mentor and I were able to create a few goals for next week. Specifically, we discussed what I would like to get out of this internship and what steps I could take to progress toward such goals over the next nine weeks. While thinking ahead in such a manner was initially daunting, I am truly excited to continue learning and working with my mentor throughout the summer! (and not just because she introduced me to her cats via Zoom this week).

In addition to working with APS, the interns had several group events throughout the week that helped us get to know each other. On Wednesday evening, a group traveled to the national mall to play spike ball and talk about our first days of work. While I learned that I might not be the best spike ball player in the cohort, I did enjoy learning about what each intern experienced during the day. Thursday involved our room’s hosting of an intern game night, where we played the one and only Azul. If you have never heard of this game before, I would highly recommend investing your time in learning it. I was introduced to the game by my girlfriend’s sister’s husband, and I have loved playing the game ever since. It was such an enjoyable experience being able to share my passion for the game with the other interns, as I am sure some of them can attest to due to my ecstatic nature in detailing its rules and regulations. Friday evening featured a very relaxing “Jazz at the Garden” by the national mall, where we saw both outfits and dance moves that were quite immaculate. Who knew that jazz could be the perfect way to end a work week? Over the weekend, a group of interns watched the recently-released Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse movie. This movie completely blew me away from both its beautiful animation and ability to balance so many deep and meaningful plotlines throughout its screen time. If you do end up seeing the movie, just keep in mind that there will be a second movie coming out next year. This will hopefully prevent a sense of confusion as the movie seemingly ends at a cliffhanger. I went in completely oblivious to this fact and wanted to ensure that others don’t make the same mistake. The interns also hosted a movie night that featured Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2, which I soon realized was made 12 years ago! It was certainly great to see this film again, but boy am I starting to feel old.

Overall, this first week was an extremely eventful experience, and I am truly excited to see what the next nine weeks have in store for me!

Week 2: Live, Laugh, Logic

As I’m writing the second week’s blog post, I’m slowly realizing that 20% of the internship has already passed within the blink of an eye. However, one could argue that such a fast-paced experience has been due to the fact that this program has already been one to remember. Such a silver lining during my sad realization of the end’s inevitability (not exactly meant to be a Thanos joke, but you certainly could take it as such) brings a sense of hope leading into week three. Yet, before approaching such a milestone and following along the lines of what my English teachers back in high school would say, a reflection is in order.

Ah yes, Monday: the day of the week that features a fresh start to your outlook on work and socializing. The Monday of week 2 certainly brought about this type of fresh start, as today’s mentor-mentee meeting (say that 3x fast) involved a discussion of the goals and expectations I would like to continue shaping for this internship. Specifically, we discussed the overall continuation of updating the educational graphs found on the organization’s website due to the new 2021 data set and the alteration of the definition of STEM used by APS. The data used by APS comes from the IPEDS federal data set, where certain codes (CIPs) of subjects and fields are chosen for degrees like physics and mathematics for analysis purposes. All of the jargon aside, APS is ultimately sorting through this data to find decades-long trends in physics and STEM in areas such as gender, race, and ethnicity in the United States. Recently, APS changed the way that it defines STEM fields for several reasons but to overall be inclusive in the type of fields included in the umbrella of STEM. My mentor and I were able to detail how an analysis of the effects of such an alteration in the STEM definition would be interesting to carry out, observing how the number of individuals classified by gender, race, and ethnicity included in the new definition contrasted with the old and attempting to understand the why behind all of it. While these concepts were quite a bit to wrap my mind around, I was both eager and determined to start digging into the weeds of the vast amount of updated data.

Or maybe the data represented some sort of berry-filled shrubbery? Use whatever metaphor works best for your figurative taste.

After a full day of work, the interns decided to take a trip to the fields by the Reflecting Pool. I have enjoyed being able to take a break from work with the other interns during this time and simply make lasting memories with the cohort after our work days have concluded. I brought my very own frisbee all the way from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which I have used multiple times on my university’s quad to pass the time during the busy semesters. The interns had a great time chatting and playing frisbee for a few hours as the sun set behind the Lincoln Memorial, helping to create a picturesque moment for the start of the week. And hey, who knew that physics majors could be fairly decent at throwing a frisbee? Maybe we should start our own ultimate frisbee team? More details to come...

The next day began with a continuation of data and graph updating leading to my daily meeting with my mentor. I have found quite a sense of fulfillment at the end of every completed spreadsheet, as all of the work I put in to update the data files neatly into place within a (hopefully) visually appealing graph. Yes, the graph might not clearly display all of the work put into the data found in the solid and dotted lines spanning over decades of information, but I still find a sense of accomplishment as I look back through these numerical visualizations that make big data appealing to analyze. My mentor meeting involved a general update on my progress in addition to a lesson on the use and application of pivot tables in data analysis. These tables helped me to check back and compare collected data for various spreadsheets, representing quite a useful tool I wish I had learned for earlier STEM-related projects in college. My mentor also shared documents with me to provide some context for the organization’s change of the STEM definition. We further discussed some of the trends we observed from the updated data, such as the general drop in physics bachelor’s degrees from 2020 to 2021. I’m hoping to find more interesting and thought-provoking trends like this throughout the next several weeks!

In contrast to Monday, the interns seemed to be quite tired from the day’s activities and did not plan for a socializing event. While this represented the first time for the group to not plan something, I will admit that it was nice to simply relax after work and catch up on shows I had been looking forward to watching. Over the past few years, I have slowly been growing my interest in the realm of Japanese animated shows, and I am currently loving the action-packed storyline of Demon Slayer in addition to waiting for the long-anticipated ending of Attack on Titan. Yes, I know that I could just read the manga for Attack on Titan, but I already waited so long for the show that I seem to find myself in a state of a lost-cost fallacy. Any tips would be appreciated.

Wednesday, the day of the week whose notorious nickname was shaped by GEICO’S genius marketing team and a CGI camel, marked quite a day for the APS interns. In the SPS summer intern program, there are three interns in total working for the American Physical Society, and we have chosen Wednesdays as the days to travel to the ACP office building for work to make the 1-hour commute one of comradery. Every month, APS hosts a virtual “Birthday Bash” to celebrate all of the birthdays for that month, and this event gave us a chance to introduce ourselves via Zoom to the rest of APS. The birthday bash was a hoot and a half, as the session covered both May and June birthdays and went through about 40 slides of funny photos for each birthday recipient. This meeting was definitely a great way for me to get acquainted with the organizational environment in addition to putting faces to names, contrasting with attempting to look at email account images in my organizational account. Before this event, my mentor and I discussed efforts of reaching out to the APS marketing team to begin work on infographics to present the data in a more understandable fashion. Throughout this internship, I can analyze the data and make detailed graphs as much as I would like. But, only a few individuals will actually download the files on the APS website to thoroughly analyze them. Bringing this data into the light of the general public in a simplistic way will help to bring about an understanding that detailed numbers might not be able to accomplish.

Wednesday evening featured an event that is notorious for physics majors and nerds in general: a video game night! Specifically, one of the interns was kind enough to lend their Switch so that we could enjoy a very lighthearted and non-screaming game of Mario Kart 8 and Super Mario Party. I honestly had not played either game since late elementary school, so it was nice to bring back some of those old memories with new friends and at an older stage of life. Who says that you are ever too old for video games, right? Unless you are a terrible player, of course, which I’m slowly coming to realize due to my disastrous performance.

Thursday was a day that I had looked forward to for quite a while. You see, over the past three and a half years, I have been dating one of the most amazing girls I have ever met (a bit biased, but it’s the truth). She (Siena) and I met through our late high school band program, and while we might be what you might label as a band couple, we have truly loved one another and have made some of my most lasting memories together. We have been doing long-distance over the past three years due to her studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and we have loved coming up to see one another throughout our school years. Now, despite this lovey-dovey connection, our paths during the summer didn’t exactly coincide due to her simple psychology-based research at Harvard (no big deal). But we made plans to travel and see each other during the summer months, and Thursday was the day that she was coming in from Boston for the weekend. On the subway ride over to DCA, I could hardly hold in my excitement to see her again after the past few weeks apart. The hug upon meeting at baggage claim was definitely worth the wait, and we both attended our respective virtual meetings and completed work leading to the close of the day after returning.

That evening, Siena and I traveled to see the one and only Logic in concert! I have kept up with the rap artist intermittently with his albums ever since late middle school, and I love his ability to create a variety of different concept albums through his artistic capabilities. Logic was actually one of the many things that Siena and I bonded over, and we were both ecstatic to find out that he was performing in DC for his new album tour. I have to say that this was one of the most entertaining concerts I have been to, where the events ranged from his performance of iconic songs to witnessing a high school senior graduate on stage. Admittedly, out of my personal concert pool of going to see Idina Menzel as a kid, there wasn’t much with which to compare my concert-going experience.

The final day of the work week involved a wonderful meeting with past mentors of my internship position. In addition to discussing career-based goals and questions relating to APS and physics as a whole, they were able to provide essential insight into my role as an APS intern. Overall, meeting with them definitely boosted a sense of motivation for the work I had and will continue to be doing for the duration of the summer. They detailed how the data I was analyzing represented a task that had been a long time coming. Furthermore, they helped me understand how my work as an intern would help to play a small yet vital role in the progression of our society through educational awareness of gender and race-based trends. After such discussions, I was able to present some of the trends I was able to both update and discover due to the new STEM classifications. This involved a discussion of the comparison between the physics and STEM bachelor’s degrees in addition to the comparison between the new and old STEM classifications. From this meeting, I will continue to investigate the effects of the new STEM definition on different realms of individuals, and I will attempt to determine which majors in the “new” STEM are contributing to such effects the most.

Jazz in the Garden made a comeback from the previous week, where another intern was kind enough to let Siena and I join him at the event and listen to quite an interesting blend of violin-based jazz. For the rest of the evening, I was able to introduce Siena to the other interns back at the dormitory. The work week had come to a close, and we were ready for the weekend!

We were lucky enough to be able to attend the pride parade on Saturday afternoon, and we had the most wonderful time seeing so many different floats, decorations, and people go by. We got to the parade at around 3:30 with the other interns, and soon realized that the parade was planned to last until 7:00! I honestly would have stayed until the very end due to the infectiously joyous nature of the parade, but we traveled with the other interns to find another pride event located in the city. However, our attempts proved to be futile due to the packed nature of the streets, and Siena and I soon decided to end such a wonderful day with Papa John’s and Heartstopper on Netflix (such a heartwarming show, I’d highly recommend watching it). Sunday involved a somehow even better end to the day, as we had a most beautiful picnic by the Reflecting Pool with cheese, apples, and cherries from a farmer’s market and crackers from Whole Foods. Memorable culinary experiences can be found in DC, that’s for sure.

Overall, I just want to say that I have truly enjoyed my mentor’s openness throughout the early stages of the internship. Her understanding and helpful nature have allowed me to feel both supported and motivated in my role as an APS intern, and I have already learned so much from her in just the first full week. I can’t wait to enter week three of this internship!

Week 3: A Networking Extravaganza

The clock continues to tick, memories continue to be made, and the time for reflection has once again come about. In comparison to my past intern blogs and to shake things up, I won’t necessarily relate my day-to-day tasks and adventures in detailed chronological order. Variety is of course the spice of life, but I’d like to believe that these blog posts should reflect the diverse range of experiences I have undertaken. And with that, the long-awaited Week 3 reflection shall commence!

Within the realm of work, this week has involved a significant amount of time in the seemingly simple yet detailed-oriented task of updating each of the graphs presented on the company’s website. In addition to updating the data based on the new 2021 and STEM numbers, I have also spent some time helping reform and rebrand the data sets so that the information is more of what some might call aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Now, I realize how this might sound like more and more tedious work throughout each week, progressively increasing in its level of both difficulty and laboriousness. However, I have undoubtedly found a sense of fulfillment in checking off each graph I complete from my mental to-do list (no need to worry, I have everything written down as well just in case my mental to-do list fails me). My mentor has been extremely supportive in these ongoing endeavors of updating and cleaning the data, and we are hoping to finish this updating-based phase of the internship by the end of June. More news to come with that!

More juicy details of my work can be found below if you so desire. If you intend to scroll through to the sections with more adventures, photos, etc, I honestly don’t blame you and wholeheartedly respect your decision.

This week also involved the continuation of my separate STEM project mentioned in my Week 2 blog (if you have no idea what I am talking about, make sure to go back to the second paragraph of my previous blog!). With my mentor’s help, I was able to complete a comparison of the old vs. new STEM bachelor’s degrees obtained by women, and we intend to make further comparisons in the realms of race and ethnicity. I am continuing to use Excel’s magic to determine the distribution of numbers across the new STEM classification (ultimately in an attempt to better understand the spread of new majors included in the field), and I hope that the wonders of pivot tables will allow me to reach deeper conclusions by the start of the week. Furthermore, my mentor shared several readings to help provide context for the data I am observing throughout my internship role. Ranging from ideas such as critical race theory to the underrepresentation of women in many fields, such readings will help me continuously make attempts at understanding the why behind the data rather than mindlessly sorting through it.

And now, a description of this week’s adventures awaits!

The creation of new and lasting memories was certainly upheld by this week’s events. Monday night featured an attempt to host another video game night, but little did we know that we didn’t have the necessary equipment (a USB to HDMI converter) to carry out our plans. Thus, we decided to spend the rest of the evening watching entertaining shows on Max and destressing from the workday.

Now, remember how I said at the beginning that I might slightly skip around the events of the week? Well, I will be applying such methodologies to this part of the blog, where Tuesday and Thursday nights featured wonderful networking receptions with amazing free food. Specifically, Tuesday evening involved a D.C. gathering for members and fellows of the Blackburn Institute based out of the University of Alabama. I mention such an organization in my bio, but it essentially serves to help create leaders and agents of change for both the state and the nation. Moreover, it represents a large community of individuals devoted to helping make their communities a better place. At the reception, I was able to meet a variety of current students, fellows, and executive members who shared a wide range of advice and experiences. It was such a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of while in the city! Ironically, Thursday night involved a similar networking setup for the SPS interns. Located at Present Company Public House (a dining experience I would recommend to any tourist or D.C. native), the interns were able to meet about a dozen executive members and past interns of the program. Ranging discussions from current research in the physics field to detailing my time playing trombone, I once again was able to create meaningful conversations and connections through such an opportunity. Oh, and before I forget, Wednesday featured a fun reggae night by “The Wharf,” where interns played both cornhole and big-blocked Jenga by the beautiful sunset. Hump Day certainly had a spectacular close this week.

I might be a bit biased in saying this, but my favorite part of the week had to be the weekend. This was not just because of the inherent nature of the weekend but was due to my traveling up to Boston to see the one and only Seina (if you had forgotten from my last blog, there’s a cute description of our relationship in paragraph eight). Upon arriving around 9:30 pm on Friday, we couldn’t help ourselves from ordering late-night pizza to celebrate our second span of time together for the summer. Saturday and Sunday were quite a whirlwind of exciting events, involving a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the New England Aquarium, and the famous Tik-Tok Mortadella Head restaurant. As you might be able to observe, Siena is quite fond of sea turtles. I have to say that there is no one I’d rather watch three of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies with (which is of course what we did).

Week 4, here we come!

Week 4: Rain, Rain, Go Away

!!(New Blog Section)!!

*Song of the Week*: “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus

Rain, the symbol for a conglomeration of rebirth, foreboding, determination, etc, made quite an appearance throughout the fourth week of the internship. Unless I’m inside either reading a compelling book or watching one of my favorite movies, I’m not exactly one to admire the mood fabricated by the presence of the rain. However, I made strides to ensure the rain’s presence only affected the dryness of my clothes rather than my mood during the week. And I will admit that the rain was admittedly a nice lead-in for the warm weather I’m sure we’ll be experiencing soon enough. Just something to keep in mind for my future self looking back through these blogs.

To test your memory of my previous blog and due to the celebration of Juneteenth, I was able to continue spending time with Siena in Boston. The day certainly moved much faster than anticipated (as the end of any wonderful trip always does), but we made sure to value the last full day we had with each other by taking a relaxing walk outside, ordering Mexican food, and watching both The Glass Onion and This is Where I Leave You on Netflix. Despite their captivating nature, we were admittedly tired of watching Pirates of the Caribbean back to back.

Tuesday marked the day I had to leave Boston and Siena, which as one can imagine certainly brought sadness to the day. Work on Tuesday involved a virtual check-in meeting with the other two APS interns Jaden and Jenna and Jenna’s mentor. We had a similar meeting the previous week, where one of our mentors talks with us about our progress, how we are feeling about the internship, and any questions we might have for them. I have really enjoyed these meetings not only because I am able to meet new APS employees but because I get to hear about what the other APS interns are doing in their respective roles. Overall, it’s just nice to know that all of our mentors are here to support us both in and out of these meetings. I attended my daily meeting with my mentor shortly after, where we discussed the continuation of updating the educational data and graphs. I am at a point where I only have a handful left, and my goal for the week is to finish this data-updating section of the internship by the end of the week! We also discussed looking at the effect of the alteration in APS’s STEM definition on different races and ethnicities in the United States, in addition to my initial work with analyzing the overall STEM majors and women in STEM. A discussion of a more consistent spreadsheet layout for each data set also came about. My mentor related how a few consistent formats for the different data tables would drastically improve their ability to annually input the updated data from a code pipeline. This would completely alter the way in which my internship would be run for the future, benefiting future interns by allowing them to spend more time to actively analyze the data sets at hand. This will certainly be an ongoing discussion with my mentor, but I hope that such actions will allow me to leave my mark on this internship role.

Wednesday was mainly a work day due to the nature of the weather, as any hopes for an afternoon intern activity on The Wharf were initially washed away by the rain. My mentor meeting involved an update of the spreadsheets I finalized in addition to a discussion of the need for the old STEM data for further analyses. You see, at the moment I am working with what are called “Uberspreadsheets” in order to acquire all of the necessary data. These spreadsheets contain degree-based information for every U.S. institution based on fields ranging from Physics to Computer Science. For my STEM analysis, I am using a STEM-oriented Uberspreadsheet (cleverly titled “STEM Uberspreadsheet 2021") that contains the updated STEM classification numbers. In order to compare the old vs. new STEM numbers for different races and ethnicities, I would need an Uberspreadsheet with the old STEM classification. My mentor said that they would be happy to create such a spreadsheet for my analysis, derived from an alteration of the source code based on the old STEM CIP codes. If you didn’t follow any of what I just said (honestly, if I was reading this I probably wouldn’t have either), I basically just need a new data set based on the old data to properly compare. We also talked about updating APS’s list of “Historically Black Colleges and Universities” (HBCUs) based on whether the previously-listed institutions still offered a physics program. In the future, I will also be updating the list of “Hispanic Serving Institutions” (HSIs) in a similar manner.

Despite the rain, a group of interns found a Bowlero Wednesday night with quite a deal for unlimited bowling after 8 pm. Most of us also bought some arcade credits, where we played games that ranged from Space Invaders to Ski Ball. I also discovered the magic of the dancing arcade games, where even my light polo didn’t prevent me from breaking a sweat. While bowling was also a fun time, I quickly remembered why I haven’t bowled in quite a while. But hey, at least I was able to buy some candy with my arcade points!

Thursday was a heck of a day! Typically, a group of interns including myself go into the American Center for Physics office on Wednesday to meet the weekly in-person minimum. However, this week marked a very special event taking place at ACP on Thursday, so we decided to wait to migrate as a pack of physicists to the office until that day. I’m assuming you’d like to know what happened on this day? Well, Thursday marked the anticipated lunch meeting with Dr. John Mather, a Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who helped to confirm the big-bang theory. Along with a Mediterranean lunch, the interns were able to talk with Dr. Mather about his life, interests, and passions. We also ate with current APS employees, where they discussed their different initiatives as a part of APS. Each intern was able to talk about their current work and aspirations for future careers, and I quickly realized that one of the members was from my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee! What a small world we live in indeed. After lunch, Dr. Mather gave the interns a presentation of his origins and fascinating work over the past several decades. He provided several pieces of advice to the interns, stating how “we’re all beginners, all of the time” and not to “be afraid to fail.” His current initiative to create a solar system imaging satellite was extremely compelling, and he further detailed the implications of topics such as AI for our society. It was such a pleasure to meet Dr. Mather, and I will never forget being able to ask him what his favorite space movie is. If you’re interested in his answer, he stated that he liked the 50s Forbidden Planet film, which of course the interns had to watch that very evening to better understand the mind of Dr. Mather.

Other than a few slight updates, Friday marked the day that I had essentially completed the data-updating section of the internship! It was really exciting to be able to reach this point in the internship, as the past few weeks had mainly involved this type of work. I’m looking forward to being able to not only work more with analyzing the data but also meeting with the marketing team to generate infographics based on my updates. After my mentor meeting, I was able to keep the past mentors updated by asking for their opinions on some interesting observations I made. Specifically, I was wondering about the inclusion of physics master’s degrees data in comparison to the past presentation of solely bachelor’s and Ph.D. for a marginalized race/ethnicity chart. I also inquired about the merging of two similar data sets to better consolidate graphs for the website. Overall, I’m excited to keep working with the data in different ways for the remainder of the internship!

The presence of the rain unfortunately had canceled plans to once again attend Jazz in the Garden, but a group of interns was able to take a beautiful national monument night walk. I had taken a similar adventure with Siena just last year in DC, and the absence of the sun makes the experience quite enjoyable. We even spent some time with Einstein on our way back!

Saturday marked a very busy yet exciting day for all of the interns. Each year during the internship, the interns are required to take part in a service initiative in DC. This initiative typically takes the form of participating in what’s known as Astronomy on the Mall, which features a collection of nerds such as ourselves helping to teach kids, parents, etc. about the wondrous worlds of physics and space. Emily (our SOCK intern) is the intern who helps to coordinate the demonstrations we’ll be conducting during the event, and she explained all of the demos Friday evening to ensure that we knew what our roles would entail. Admittedly, we might have had a bit too much fun with some of the demonstrations...

On Saturday around 3:30 pm, the interns were able to begin mid-afternoon in the best way one could conceive: by eating free Domino’s pizza. I will say that I am more of a Papa John’s kind of person, but the free pizza at the time tasted just as good. After we had helped ourselves to the early dinner, we made our way to the Smithsonian Art and Industries Building. Going along with the theme of the week, Astronomy on the Mall was sadly moved from its original location on the mall to indoors due to the prospect of rain. We quickly set up all of our physics demonstrations spread out along three tables, which ranged from a gravity well to astronomy trivia. The event lasted from 6 until 9:30 pm, where the interns switched roles halfway through. I started on the “wave” table teaching people about the physics behind both sound and light waves through activities such as boom-whackers and diffraction glasses. I loved teaching others about these topics, and some of the interns were able to put on a few concerts featuring “Hot Crossed Buns” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The hall quickly filled up with families throughout the night, and the event went by much faster than I had anticipated. Astronomy on the Mall was such a fun and fulfilling experience, and the whirling sound-makers will forever hold a special place in my heart despite receiving a small callus as a byproduct of my excited twirling efforts. Oh, and we had the most adorable matching physics shirts to ensure that people knew just how nerdy we really are. I’ll undoubtedly be wearing mine once I get back home.

While one might think that we would have been exhausted after such an experience, a group of interns including myself decided to go to the open Smithsonian night exhibits. The Museum of Natural History was bustling with individuals, and we found ourselves going back in time through an observation of diverse artwork and fossil exhibits. I was surprised to not find Ben Stiller hiding among the crowd.

Sunday morning involved a trip to the farmer’s market, where I enjoyed some wonderful fruit and cheese samples in addition to a most delectable vegetable empanada. The skies are finally turning to a color other than gray!

And with that, week 4 has come to an end. But week 5 is just beginning!

Week 5: Coasting/Kayaking into July

~Song of the Week~ “Feel this Moment” by Pitbull ft. Christina Aguilera

As Bon Jovi would say, we’re halfway there! These past few weeks have gone by faster than I would have ever expected, and I have made several lasting memories in my role and with the other interns. It will undoubtedly be difficult to return to Alabama for the beginning of the end of my undergraduate years, but I know that I will have gained such a wonderful and fulfilling experience over the past summer. Now, before I get too sentimental, let’s hop in on what happened this week!

My intern duties for this week revolved around two meetings with APS’s Bridge and IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity) programs to begin forming ideas for our desired infographics. Both programs focus on increasing the diversity and sense of inclusion within the field of physics and STEM, and my mentor set up such meetings so that we could eventually combine my data with Bridge and IDEA’s own data to increase public awareness through visually appealing infographics. On Monday, I was able to discuss a variety of ideas with my mentor for what data the infographics could include. From there, we discussed the creation of a relatively informal slide deck for the two meetings this week. Such a presentation would include our vision of what the infographics might look like, the context of the data, and a few snapshots of finalized data figures that illustrate the breadth of the data we could present to the public. Going along with the near-the-end theme of this blog, we also talked about the final dates for the submission of an abstract and a final presentation. She let me know that the presentation serves as a way to show the other interns, in addition to your finalized work, the process through which you traversed during the summer. I’m definitely looking forward to the final presentation both due to the opportunity to talk about my work in addition to hearing about what the other interns have accomplished.

Monday night featured an amazing event that most of the interns were able to experience. This event was called “Astronomy on Tap,” and it involved 3 talks given by NASA workers about the wonders and mysteries of space. It was right up our alley, and we were able to learn more about their work which ranged from coronal mass ejections to black hole jets. Also, no need to show off, but all of the space trivia prizes were won by SPS interns. With the power of the interns, no trivia night is safe.

My first infographic meeting took place on Tuesday, where I was introduced to two employees affiliated with the Bridge program. After my presentation, they offered up some interesting ideas regarding the use of one chart illustrating the disparities of marginalized races in the field of physics. I was also able to chat with them at the end of the meeting about general career advice and their experiences at APS, which was certainly a valuable experience. Other than that, my mentor meeting brought up another task to complete since I had recently finished updating the graph data. My next task was to update what is known as the “top educators list” on the APS website, which basically provides a tabulated summary of physics degree-related data for different institutions. The older tables can be found here if you’d like to investigate further: Click Here . Luckily, the data for updating these tables is located in the Uberspreadsheets I’ve been working with for the past several weeks. So it should be a walk in the park, right?

The day that most ACP interns go into the office (Wednesday) featured my second meeting for the week, this time with the IDEA team. Similar to Tuesday’s meeting, the team was able to provide insightful information and perspectives for the infographics. One topic involved the use of the team’s data on the types of organizations in APS in addition to possibly using physics retention data I’ve been able to gather. We’ve got a ways to go before we actually disperse any infographics out to the public, but we’ve certainly had a good start so far! In addition to these meetings at the beginning of the week, I spent some time working on my STEM-based project for the internship (did you think I had forgotten?). My mentor was able to create a new spreadsheet with the old STEM classifications to compare with the new CIP codes, and I was able to generate old vs. new STEM plots for different races and ethnicities. I discussed these updates with my mentor, to which she advised further analysis into the data of comparisons for gender in each race and ethnicity category. My work has also entailed finalizing the update of an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and HSI (Hispanic-Serving Institutions) list based on the 2021 data. Such updates will help APS better determine the classifications of different institutions in the United States.

I have to say that one of the most enjoyable nights of the week took place on Wednesday. One of the returning past interns (Janessa) talked last week about participating in kayaking and paddleboarding on the Potomac River with the Potomac Conservatory. This organization carries out different conservation efforts for the river throughout the year, and the money spent on kayaking and paddleboarding tickets goes straight to their initiatives. With such a noble cause and the prospect of a wonderful time, several interns including myself went to the river to check in and grab our gear. Admittedly, I did chicken out of paddle boarding due to my fear of falling into the river. From 6:30 up until 8 pm, we spent our time traveling down the river and admiring the continuously-changing color of the sky from baby blue to rose pink. As with any good thing in life, the experience was over sooner than desired, but we all are planning to return the week after next to make even more memories on the water!

Work on Thursday mainly involved a continuation of the top educators list update, and we specified the ways in which clarification comments should be made for each table summary. Such clarifications involve concepts like the reasoning behind the number of institutions included in each list to ensure that observers understand the logic behind each table. Stemming from the meetings earlier this week, we detailed the steps I would need to take to progress the infographic project. Based on the comments and questions from our meeting, I will need to determine ways in which to present the desired data so that the information is both visually appealing and comprehensible. Since APS has a summer holiday from Monday through Wednesday of next week, I will continue to spend more time considering such options for the vision of the project.

Friday entailed a wonderful meeting with the APS Public Engagement team as a part of the APS intern lunch and learn activities set up by the organization. The other APS interns and I learned so much from each employee during this meeting, ranging from their favorite thing working for APS to any advice they would give to their past selves. I have really enjoyed these meetings over the summer, as they have provided me not only with key pieces of advice but a vast amount of meaningful connections as well. While one might expect me to provide a brief overview of my mentor meeting next, this is not the case. Why, might you ask? Well, it’s because the interns were able to take part in a tour of the capital with our intern working at the capital (Ruthie)! This tour is put together by the AIP Mather Policy Intern, and we were all excited to see the inside of our nation’s capital that afternoon. Our hopes and excitements were certainly met by the extravagant nature of the building along with its intricate history, and we had a filling linner (in-between lunch and dinner) that ended the afternoon on a perfect note. Who knew that touring the U.S. government could make someone so famished?

The weekend went even faster than these past five weeks (and not just because of its shorter length of time in comparison). The days were filled with several intern activities and get-togethers leading into Independence Day, where one of the interns (Janessa) even had the opportunity to DJ in the city. Don’t ask me how she convinced the DJ to let her help, but she definitely rose to the occasion with her choice of music!

Week 5, here’s looking at you kid!

Week 6: Independence Day (Without the Aliens)

~Song of the Week~ “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” by Taylor Swift

Due to the generous policies of APS, most of week 6 for me in addition to the other 2 APS interns (Jenna and Jaden) involved a much-needed break from Monday through Wednesday. Thus, most of this week’s blog will focus more on intern activities rather than work-related updates. But not to worry, these are certainly some interesting details of my end-of-the-week work and meetings if you so choose to continue reading up to that point!

As with any type of break, I certainly took advantage of the ability to sleep in during our APS summer break. Monday fully aligned with this type of mindset, and it was nice to be able to recharge from work over the past several weeks through this manner of rest. Other than sleep, the main event of the day involved traveling to a Nationals Baseball game at Nationals Park. This event was paid for by the SPS program and was coordinated with the help of the director Brad Conrad, and we all truly appreciated his work to ensure that we could relax and enjoy the game! I am admittedly not the biggest fan of baseball, but it was really nice to have the opportunity to talk with the other interns in such a beautiful setting. The group had amazing seats right above the “bullpen”, which I had been told was the name for the area where pitchers warm up (like I said, not the biggest fan). I even had the chance to talk with Brad’s wife during the game, where our conversations ranged from schools in North Carolina to EPCOT’s International Food & Wine Festival. With a hotdog and cracker jacks in hand, the game was over before I knew it with a disappointing loss to the Cincinnati Reds. But one could say that the fireworks at the end of the game made up for such a loss.

Tuesday marked the celebration of Independence Day, and I began the day with a nice morning run by the National Mall. Sorry, did I say nice? Oh, I meant an extremely hot and humid run among hundreds of people lining up for the upcoming parades. At least the views of the monuments in the spectacular sunlight took my mind off of the heat, in addition to my varied taste in running music that can range from Calvin Harris to Elton John. After returning and drinking an endless amount of water from our room’s Brita, I spent the next few hours cooling off, relaxing, and catching up on Amazon Prime shows including one titled “From” that has currently captivated my binge-watching attention. One of my previous blogs mentioned how many of the interns in early June went to see the new Across the Spiderverse movie, which was an amazing film to watch. However, one intern (Ruthie) hadn’t seen the movie yet! Of course, I along with another intern (Tiffany) was more than willing to see the movie with Ruthie to re-experience the film. It was just as enjoyable as I had anticipated, and after the movie we quickly went to the National Mall to meet up with the rest of the group for fireworks. The other interns had claimed a nice spot near the Washington Monument, and we sat for a few hours playing card games, Backgammon, and listening to music cued up by Jannesa. The firework show began around 9:15 pm, and both the music and fireworks matched the essence of the American spirit where colors of red, white, and blue sparkled while songs by Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, and John Philip Sousa played through the loudspeakers.

Wednesday didn’t involve too much other than the anticipation of jumping back into the work grind. The humid weather convinced me that it was time for a haircut, which helped to free up some headspace both figuratively and literally. The day passed by quickly, and some interns decided to end the middle of the week with a semi-friendly game night of Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. No matter who you are, Super Smash Bros brings out anyone’s competitive side in a brilliant fashion, and this was undoubtedly the case for our evening game session. It had been a long time since I had last played, but I think that I’ll stick with Meta Knight for future game nights.

Thursday was quite a memorable day on several accounts. For one, my girlfriend Siena had planned to come back to DC from her first visit in June, and I was able to pick her up from DCA that morning. I was really excited to spend even more time with her in DC up until Monday! Second, most of the interns traveled to the ACP office space on Thursday to watch Jenna (our APS Public Engagement Intern) present a workshop on misinformation in the realm of science and general conversations. Jenna did an amazing job with several engaging activities during the workshop, and I had a wonderful time learning more about productive means of conversation involving both active and reflective listening techniques. The free Panera lunch also hit the spot during the meeting. As a current undergraduate student, free food always tastes the best.

During my mentor meeting, we discussed my continuation of the Top Educators list in addition to finishing the update of the HBCU and HSI list for 2021. I will also be considering more ideas for infographics for upcoming meetings in the following weeks, specifically based on information shared with me from previous meetings with other APS departments. I’m looking forward to continuing working on this project to help generate more ideas for future APS efforts! We further discussed work on the old vs. new STEM analysis, which at the moment involves continuing to generate plots for different classifications of individuals and how the new STEM definition differs from its previous definition. She let me know that I can also start looking at other types of analyses if I so choose depending on my continued interest in the STEM analysis, so I will keep this in mind throughout the following week. After work, Siena and I took a refreshing night walk through the monuments on the mall. These walks never get old due to the beautiful nature of the National Mall, and we passed through both the Korean War Veterans Memorial in addition to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.

Work on Friday included discussions of my efforts to finish the Top Educators list, one of my main focuses during this 2-day work week. My mentor spent some time going back and reviewing some of my goals for the summer, specifically asking if my goals had been met and if there might be any other goals I’d like to set before the end of the internship. I stated how I have been able to gain valuable experience in the realm of both data handling and analysis through my work with Excel, and I talked about how I had enjoyed being able to carry out an analysis of the STEM-based data to better understand its effects. In terms of new goals, I discussed how I’d like to gain more experience in the realm of code implementation for the data. My mentor said that there were many ways I could make this become a reality, ranging from the generation of plots from code to a statistical t-test of different data sets. I’m excited to work on accomplishing such goals before the end of the summer!

Post-work events with Siena entailed a trip to Buffalo Wild Wings due to our shared cravings for the restaurant’s main dish (wings, of course) and a trip to The Wharf. We admittedly intended to take part in line dancing at The Wharf, but the humidity quickly persuaded us to return back to Foggy Bottom. However, we still were able to enjoy our time outside, and we even got to experience a Romanian-based festival by the water! We spent the rest of the night watching Knives Out, admiring Benoit Blanc’s detective skills with our popcorn in hand.

The weekend was one of the best I have experienced in DC thus far! Siena and I took a trip to DC’s zoo on Saturday, which was a wonderful experience. We hadn’t been back since our trip to DC this past July, and we spent hours looking through the different exhibits. If I could detail every riveting experience we had at the zoo, I’d be sitting here writing this blog for much longer than anticipated. The elephants/turtles and otters called to Siena and I respectively during our visit, but there were so many other mammals, amphibians, and fish that captured our attention. After the zoo, we both were craving Hispanic food and decided to eat at Mi Casa near Dupont Circle. The food was fantastic, and it was a great early birthday meal for Siena! We spent some time with the other interns Saturday night playing card games and going out to Adams Morgan. If you are ever in that area, I’d highly recommend grabbing a slice at Jumbo Slice Pizza! Sunday was a relaxing day topped off with watching The Parent Trap, which I admittedly had never seen before and would recommend to any rom-com fan!

Week 6, it’s been a pleasure!

Week 7: The Beginning of the End

~Song of the Week~ “Together Forever” by Rick Astley

I realize how the title of this week’s blog might sound, conveying emotions of sadness due to the approaching closure of the internship. But I’m here to persuade you from feeling this way about my current state of mind, and I’d like you to shape your perspective of the implications of such a title. Yes, it’s disheartening to know that the end is certainly nigh, but it’s encouraging to realize that I had the chance to take part in such a developmental and impactful experience. Realizing how close we are to the end allows us to reflect on how far we’ve come, and I am truly grateful to have been able to take advantage of the opportunities this internship provided and will continue to provide for the next few weeks. And speaking of reflection, let’s reflect on this past week!

On Monday, I spent a good portion of my workday finalizing the spreadsheets, graphs, and graph images for the APS website. Such a process involves the tedious checking of each spreadsheet to ensure they are ready to be uploaded. This process will be continued throughout the week with the help of my mentor, and we are aiming to be finished by next week with this main part of the internship! In addition, I worked to prepare for an upcoming Thursday marketing meeting regarding the infographic project. We are beginning to consider the layout of such an infographic in more detail, where we are asking ourselves questions such as what information we’d like to include, what stories we’d like to present, and how many infographics we want to create. My mentor and I discussed the creation of an informal presentation for the meeting on Thursday with the marketing team, which will help let them know our vision, the types of data we have, and what stories we could tell from the different data sets. My mentor made sure to point out that the marketing team will create the visuals of the infographics while we help to provide the data. I’m excited to continue working on distributing this type of educational-based information to the public, even though everything will be finalized after the internship concludes! The APS interns also had the chance to virtually meet with the APS News and Career team, where Elizabeth Boatman and Taryn MacKinney provided great insights and advice during the meeting. Monday evening did not entail an intern activity, and I recharged for the upcoming day by watching some TV shows in the dorm.

The following day involved similar types of work on my end, where we focused more on the types of data we’d like to present to the marketing team. Specifically, we are looking at creating infographics on the topics of gender, racial, and ethnic data for U.S. institutions. In continuation of the previous week, I am still finalizing the update of the Top Educators list for the website. I’ll have to say that the 2021 Education and Diversity intern (Zeynep Tuna) has helped to make my life much easier due to a Top Educators instructional document they created! The APS Interns met with Sarah Monk from APS Membership to gain even more career-based insight, and we had great conversations about our future aspirations post-graduation. Tuesday evening featured another lazy period of time due to the hectic nature of the day, but I’m sure more intern activities will come about later in the week! (Since I’m writing this from a future perspective, I know that activities will happen. But let’s just pretend like I don’t know for the sake of drama!)

Wednesday was a great day this week, and not just because the APS interns had a wonderful meeting with the Careers team. July 12th marked Siena’s (my girlfriend, if you might be reading this blog first for some odd reason) 21st birthday!!! It was so nice to be able to celebrate an early birthday with her this past weekend, and it’s been so special to be able to celebrate three birthdays with her since we’ve been together! In addition to such festivities, I was able to finalize the marketing presentation for Thursday with my mentor. I was admittedly a bit anxious to present this information, but my mentor helped to walk me through what it is we are trying to convey to the team. Something my parents always told me was that being nervous is actually a good thing, signifying the fact that you care about what you are doing. If my nervousness is any indication of my wanting to see this project come to fruition, I’ll take it! In contrast to the activity-free past few evenings, a group of interns returned to the Potomac to once again paddle its treacherous waters. We decided to explore in the direction opposite to our last kayaking adventure, and we made it all the way to the Lincoln Memorial! Despite the beaming sun overhead, we had a great time listening to music ranging from Pirates of the Caribbean to Taylor Swift.

On Thursday, many of the interns went to the ACP building for both work and a “Phone Videography Workshop” where we learned about the sense of creativity one can bring into the realm of photography. The marketing meeting with Angeliki Frango and Emma Ferraiuolo was splendid! Both my mentor and I were able to relate the vision for these infographics, and the team shared wonderful ideas and feedback. We discussed the ways in which these infographics could be made, and they provided current examples of several infographics from other organizations to provide different ideas. Tomorrow, I will have another meeting with the past mentors of the Education and Diversity intern role to update the group on my progress. I spent the rest of the workday finalizing my spreadsheet and graph uploading efforts, and I traveled back on the metro with a few interns. The interns organized a potluck for Thursday night, where the theme of the potluck was foods we had at home/loved growing up. Due to my southern background, I had to bring a staple of Tennessee: cornbread. I am admittedly not the best cook out there, but I think I did a half-decent job with my dish (cornbread isn’t too difficult to make, but let’s not take that into account). The night was quite a culinary experience!

Friday began with a continuation of my STEM analysis work. What, you thought I had forgotten that was something I intended to carry on with? Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve written about this work, and I haven’t made too many strides due to the different types of projects I’ve been working on. To continue this analysis, I was able to create additional tables and graphs that help to provide a better understanding of the ways in which the new STEM definition affected the distribution of gender through Bachelor, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees. Soon after, I met with the past mentors to review the progress I had made since our last meeting in June. We spent a large chunk of time reviewing the uploaded spreadsheets and making comments and recommendations before they were completely finalized. Regarding my STEM analysis, the group was definitely interested in the trends I had gathered from the data. I’ll be carrying out more work over the next several weeks to provide more understanding of the numbers and trends we are seeing. During the meeting, we also discussed the different types of data we’d like to see included in the infographics in addition to the time frame of the infographic release. I gained a lot of insight and perspective from this meeting, and I’m looking forward to talking with the group again before the end of the internship! Friday night involved a game night session that I had been talking with Hannah (the Physics Today Science Writing intern) to help organize. We had a wonderful time playing both Super Smash Bros and the update for Mario Kart 8, and let’s just say that I’m a bit more confident in my Super Smash Bros-playing capabilities after this evening. I went to bed with a full stomach from the goodness that is Chipotle and ended the week on a satisfied note. Oh, and I saw the most beautiful double rainbow!

Similar to the past several weeks of the internship, the weekend went by much faster than anticipated. The interns put on a fun Barbie and Oppenheimer-themed get-together Saturday night in anticipation of the release of both movies next week, and everyone showed up well-dressed for the occasion! Sunday took on its typical role of being a relaxing recharge for the end of the week and the beginning of the next. It’s crazy to think that we only have a few more weekends with everyone, but I know that we’ll make the most of it while we can!

Au revoir Week 7!

Week 8: ‘Twas the Night Before Barbenheimer...

~Song of the Week~ “You Get What You Give” by New Radicals

Spicing up this week a little bit, I had the chance to travel back up to Boston to visit Siena! This was a bit of a spontaneous decision on both of our parts, but we both realized that this would be the best time to visit before the end of the internship took over my schedule. Through our collective brainpower, we determined the best means of travel to decrease trip expenses: the Amtrak there and JetBlue on the way back. Since the Amtrak was more or less an 8-hour trip, the week started around 1:30 am for me as I woke up in preparation. Union Station was so beautiful despite not being fully awake to truly admire it!

After taking a relaxing nap, I began work for the week focusing on finalizing the graphs and images for each spreadsheet based on my discussion with the past mentors last week. I made sure to fully update each of the spreadsheets and that all necessary sections of each graph were included, and I took into account the different categories of spreadsheets to make the future updating of spreadsheets more effective. I also worked to create a set of graphs and data that might be good to include in our planned infographics, including data such as the number of Hispanic Americans in physics and STEM in addition to the percentage of physics and STEM degrees awarded to women. My mentor recommended reading a set of articles to increase my knowledge of the use of the “Underrepresented Minority” and to better understand the implications of language as a whole. After work, Siena and I made some at-home pizza and watched The Godfather!

The following day, my mentor and I met with Crystal Bailey of APS to discuss the ways that the Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) could help to bring in more data (qualitative and quantitative) for the planned infographics. I had updated a previous marketing presentation for this meeting to focus on more gender-based data, and we discussed how the percentage of degrees awarded to women graphs for each level of academic achievement (Bachelor, Master’s, and Ph.D.) could be used. During my mentor meeting, we discussed one of the articles I had read. This article focused on the harmful label of “underrepresented minority” in the United States and proposed alternative solutions for the title, stating how members of the group should be the only ones who have the right to rename. We discussed the language I worked on for the infographic graphs and data, continuously keeping in mind the implications of the language used.

As the work day came to a close, Siena and I decided to travel to Little Italy in Boston! We took the “T” (apparently slang for the metro in Boston), ate a delicious dinner that constituted hefty servings of chicken parmesan and chicken piccata, went out for drinks at a cute bar, and bought some sweet treats at a pastry shop. Good thing I’m not as indecisive as I used to be (it still took me a while to decide on what pastry I wanted though).

Wednesday involved a hefty amount of work leading into the latter half of the week. First and foremost, I began the much-anticipated work of developing my abstract since my mentor was more than happy to provide critiques throughout the week. It was certainly nerve-wracking to attempt at summarizing all the work that I have carried out this summer, but it was good to start writing my ideas down on paper (really digital paper on Google Docs, but you get the gist of it). I also made progress on reading another article that I discussed with my mentor, this one focusing on how we should work to change the ways in which we perceive diversity, equity, and social justice. I had continued work on the Top Educators List but quickly ran into a problem that I ran by my mentor. The values for the lists represent 3-year averages for all institutions, and institutions are only included in the list if their 3-year average is 3.33 and above. A list I had been working on, specifically a Ph.D. institution list for the top number of physics Ph.D.'s awarded to African American students, had a maximum 3-year average value of 2! My mentor said that she will work to see how this 3.33-and-above might be altered for lists such as these. Our meeting also involved preparing for a meeting with the APS website team to update the website with my graphs. This preparation mainly consisted of ensuring I had all the images on hand from Google Drive. When this meeting occurred later in the afternoon, I essentially was trained on how to use the “Asana” organizational task tool to upload all the completed graphs with each graph’s text. And, before this final meeting with the marketing team, I had the chance to speak again with Midhat Farooq to discuss career plans and professional development. Despite the hectic nature of the day, I was able to sit in the courtyard of the Boston Public Library with Siena. It was such a beautiful day! We ended the afternoon with a walk through the Boston Common and had some of the best sesame seed chicken I had ever eaten!

We began Thursday with a trip to the Boston Museum of Science! As a person majoring in physics, I completely geeked out at any exhibit of mathematics, engineering, and space in the museum (as I’m sure Siena can attest to). They also had a wonderful green room with a variety of flower species!

My progress with the STEM analysis reached a concluding point (at least for Bachelor’s data that is). During the week, I had been updating a spreadsheet with all the bachelor’s CIP codes, old STEM CIP codes, and new STEM CIP codes containing the number of total degrees, degrees obtained by women, and degrees obtained by men for each CIP code. With this spreadsheet, I determined the sections of majors included by the new STEM definition that had the greatest impact in altering the gender demographics of the field as defined by APS. I worked with my mentor to create a semi-finalized table to show which CIP codes had the greatest effect in this realm, including Agricultural Sciences and Psychology, and I plan to continue working on developing additional graphs to further this analysis. To prepare for my upcoming final presentation, I worked to create a bare-bones layout of what I’d like to include. I talked with my mentor, who provided a range of critiques and advice to improve the presentation. For instance, we discussed how I couldn’t necessarily talk about each of my projects in-depth due to time constraints. Rather, I would select my major projects and present on these, where I might be able to discuss other projects through questions at the end of the presentation. The end of the meeting involved a recap of the website meeting on Wednesday, where my mentor trained me on how to properly upload the graphs and text through the creation of tasks on Asana. Sadly, Thursday marked the day that I had to leave Siena, but we knew that we had a wonderful time together over the past few days!

I worked at ACP on Friday, marking my last day working in the office! I spent most of the day working on creating all of the necessary tasks for updating the website on Asana. This involved creating a task for each updated graph (PNG and PDF files) along with the corresponding text for each graph. The other main topic discussed during my mentor meeting for Friday was my draft of an abstract, which took up the majority of the meeting. Similar to past conversations this week, we discussed constantly considering the implications of language used in the abstract. My mentor was extremely helpful with critiques and advice for the next revision, which I worked on soon after the meeting. With the large yet fulfilling amount of work, the work day quickly came to an end to lead into the festivities of Friday night. I had bought tickets this past week to take part in the cultural phenomenon that is “Barbenheimer” (a double feature of Barbie and Oppenheimer). One of the interns was going with a friend from home, and they were more than happy to have me tag along to watch with them. We started the evening with Barbie at 6:00, about a 2-hour break for dinner, and ending with Oppenheimer at 10:40. The movies absolutely made up for getting back to the dorms around 2:45 am, where both were completely different but represented quite a rollercoaster of emotions. I’d definitely recommend watching them!

A group of interns traveled to a Japanese restaurant for brunch on Saturday around Dupont Circle, which had amazing sushi. That night, we experienced DC’s night life with one of the intern’s boyfriend who had come into town for his birthday. It was fun celebrating with him!

It’s been exciting, Week 8!

Week 9: The Final Countdown!

~Song of the Week~ “The Final Countdown” by Europe

We’re almost there! As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. But I think a part of me wishes that this summer would keep going just a little bit longer. I guess this is just a part of the innate human condition, continually wishing for more time to make more of one’s experience. However, what’s important is the way that we used the time we have, and I can say that I used the time that I had this summer to the best of my ability. Before I get too emotional, I’ll go ahead and start reflecting on this previous week to provide insight into both my work and the intern activities. On a side note, I want to go ahead and apologize for the left-skewed nature of the blog’s photos due to most of the activities taking place in the latter half of the week. So, get ready for a block of text and some cool photos to follow!

Monday’s work mainly entailed reviewing and editing my presentation for the APS Programs team on Tuesday. I can say that it is certainly nice to have a space to practice this presentation a week before the rough draft is due for the internship. I think that one of the most difficult parts of the presentation, other than trying to squeeze all of my work into 8 minutes, is trying to make the presentation engaging for listeners. This doesn’t mean that I perceive my summer’s work as boring, but I know that my audience will have no idea about the various acronyms or data files I’ve been working with this summer. Thus, I want to make sure that I provide this understanding for them in both an informative and engaging manner so that they remember what was discussed during the presentation. So as you can tell, I’ve still got some work to do, but I’m excited to see it through. Other than working on my presentation, I was able to review most of the tasks I had completed this summer to see if any revisions needed to be made. This involved work on updating the APS education statistics graph Excel files and images, the Top Educator lists, the HBCU, BSI, and HSI list, and separating the Excel files into categories of table templates. The last task is one I had been working on more recently, where I am divvying up each of the Excel tables into one of four templates of my creation. This will provide a clearer allocation of the data and hopefully for a future code implementation of data input. And finally, after much work, I was able to turn in the finalized version of my abstract! This was a bit nerve-wracking to create, but it felt good to finally complete it.

Tuesday marked the day of the APS intern (Jenna, Jaden, and I) practice presentations! We each presented to the APS Programs team via Zoom and received feedback from the team upon finishing. I presented for about 10.5 minutes, which marked a clear way I could improve, and afterward, my mentor discussed some ways that I could further improve the presentation based on their feedback and the feedback of others. Ranging from making the slides slightly less cluttered to keeping my audience in mind, I know that this feedback will certainly help my presentation leading into the final week of the internship. In addition to my practice presentations, I made progress with my mentor for our infographic work. We are working with a collection of about 5 graphs and data sets that we plan to bring to the marketing team, ranging from the percentage of physics bachelor degrees awarded to Hispanic Americans and Latinos to the percentage of physics bachelor degrees awarded to women. I will be working on more of the language for the infographics this week to prepare for next week’s marketing meeting.

In addition to continuing tasks with the Excel table templates, most of Wednesday entailed working on the text for the infographics due to the proximity of the internship’s end. I had made some strides in a “rough-draft” form of the text, and my mentor discussed the vision for what we’d like for the text to evoke to viewers of the infographics. This not only involved presenting a drive for change to the audience, but it also involved illustrating how APS is working with this data to stay committed to its core values of diversity and inclusion. I’ll be making final edits to this text through the remainder of the week, making sure to include how we can pair this data with other APS programs (i.e. CUWiP and Bride statistics) in addition to directing viewers to the APS webpages for more information. Today, I also made some final edits to the Top Educators lists, where I mainly focused on formatting issues. These lists won’t be updated soon after I’m gone since my mentor is checking on the “lower bound” for these lists (a 3-year average of 3.333 as a minimum), but I’ll be sure to complete them before I leave so that she has all of the necessary information for updating the website. Wednesday night involved an intern game night of the Azul board game, which takes a bit longer to play than one might imagine but is still fun nonetheless.

Our last workshop took place virtually on Thursday, where we talked with Dr. Midhat Farooq about the creation of an effective skills-based resume. I had the chance to talk with Dr. Farooq a few weeks back, and I learned so much information from this workshop that I know I’ll use. Who knew that writing a resume could be so stress-free if you had the right approach? Thursday’s mentor meeting was two-folded, focusing on comments for the updated graph tables and images and discussing a semi-finalized version of the infographic text. The former included comments such as updating the text found on a few images and represented minor updates just to make sure that the files were ready for uploading onto APS’s web pages. For the infographic work, we went through and reviewed the text I had updated. While I still have edits to make for the following week, the updates I made helped to provide a clearer message for the infographics, thus increasing their level of comprehensibility for future audiences. For Thursday night, I observed a group of interns continuing a space-based DnD campaign called Lightspeed which was quite entertaining.

Friday was certainly a memorable part of the week due to the intern tour of the National Institute of Standards and Technology! We have a handful of interns out of the cohort who have been working with NIST throughout the summer, and I had always wanted to tour the secrets of NIST ever since I heard about the research the interns were conducting. And yes, I’m not a spy, just a nerdy physics kid who gets excited at the prospect of looking at science stuff. The day was both hot and humid, which made the hour-long trip to NIST go by a bit slower than expected. But it was all worth it as we trekked across the NIST campus and soon entered the main building, filled with the history of the organization through various displays. From here, we began our journey toward a day filled with a variety of tours, where we heard from a diverse range of researchers about their work with the organization. Ranging from additive manufacturing with metal 3D printers to the blending of physics and chemistry in the realm of forensic science, I was completely captivated by every tour. We even toured a division of NIST that standardizes force measurements, working with a million-pound collection of 20 metal plates that each weighed 50,000 pounds! If I ever have a chance to work with NIST, I’ll apply faster than you can say “trace explosives and narcotics detection!” I’d highly recommend checking out this video, which shows what type of forensics research is being conducted at NIST in addition to what the heck I just exclaimed means: video here . (and if you are wondering, that last photo is a clone of Newton’s apple tree!)

Despite the disheartening realization that this would be our last weekend together, a group of interns traveled to a dueling piano bar Saturday night. I had never been to a piano bar up until that point, and I would love to go back! We had a wonderful time singing to the most iconic songs one might think of when considering famous piano music, such as “Don’t Stop Believing” and, of course, “Piano Man.” We were there for at least three hours, but it seemed to go by in a span of only 30 minutes. The rest of the weekend was filled with mainly catching up on work and rewatching some of my favorite DreamWorks movies in the evening.

Thanks for everything Week 9!

Week 10: The End?

~Song(s) of the Week~ “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by Sir Elton John/"The Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + The Machine

And with that, the 2023 SPS Summer Internship comes to a close. But, the memories we made along the way will last a lifetime. Writing this last reflection represents a bitter-sweet moment as I realize how far I’ve come this summer alongside some of the most amazing physics undergrads. Of course, I’m excited to finish up my undergraduate experiences, but it would be great to have just one more day with the interns. This week really went out with a bang due to its hectic nature! And, because of my busy work schedule in finalizing my projects and presentation, I unfortunately wasn’t able to attend many of the intern activities this week. So I apologize for the absence of activity-based photos for this week’s blog, but hopefully my past nine will make up for what this blog is missing!

Monday involved a continuation of final edits for the presentation, as the interns have a practice presentation session on Thursday this week. Another main focus of the day was finalizing the text for the infographics, where I worked with my mentor to make the text short and to the point. Our goal is to present a key message to the audience of each infographic, ranging from ethnic and racial disparities to gender disparities in the fields of physics and STEM. By the end of the day and with the help of my mentor, we had a set of five graphs with corresponding text for an upcoming marketing meeting on Wednesday. We were still waiting to pair such graphs and data with other APS organizations, such as CUWiP and Bridge, and we’ll be able to incorporate their data within the infographic text and layout. As the week and internship slowly came to a close, I worked to ensure that all necessary spreadsheets, images, graphs, etc. were uploaded to our shared Google Drive.

On Tuesday, I had the chance to continue practicing my presentation with the past mentors of my intern role. The advice that they provided was extremely helpful, and I was also excited to share the final updates I had made with my STEM analysis. Specifically, this involved creating finalized tables that display the additional number of degrees awarded for each field from the shift in a STEM classification and, out of these additions, what the percentage of women was. I created such tables for the bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. levels, which helped to illustrate how fields such as Agricultural Sciences and Psychology helped to increase the representation of women in STEM. (if you are curious about such findings, make sure to take a look at the “Bonus Slides” section of my presentation once it is posted on the SPS website under my profile!) I also had the chance to meet with a member of the marketing team to get a better idea about their role in APS and any advice they might have for an individual soon parting ways from undergrad.

Wednesday marked our meeting with the marketing team to provide updates on the infographic project. We presented the group of figures, statistics, and text we had prepared for the meeting, and we detailed how we were still waiting to obtain data from other APS organizations. Some key ideas from the meeting included sharing some tips with the design team once we send the data their way, which could involve sharing the way we’d like for the data to be displayed to the public. By the end of the meeting, the team stated how they’d like for everything to be together by the end of August to provide the design team with an ample amount of time to prepare the infographics. Despite not completely finishing the infographics by the end of the summer, I know that the rest of the project is in good hands, and I am excited to see where it goes from here!

Most of Thursday involved a practice presentation session with the rest of the interns (this marked my 3rd practice session overall). I was eager to have this opportunity to share my work with the interns in addition to gaining constructive feedback. Other than the typical nerves that come with a presentation, the only other thing that was most difficult was having to switch my mindset from presenting via Zoom to presenting face-to-face. The practice session went well, and I took note of the tips other interns provided for my presentation. It was super interesting hearing about the work, roles, and responsibilities of the other interns as well! After the practice session, I sadly had a last meeting with my mentor. I knew going into this summer that everything would fly by, and I was certainly not wrong when I realized that my last meeting was on Thursday. Other than finalizing a few items and ensuring that everything was uploaded to the shared drive, I made sure to talk with Dr. O’Donnell about just how helpful and open she had been throughout the entire internship. Without her help and the nearly limitless amount of resources she provided, I would have been stumbling through the dark for weeks on end. I truly appreciate all of the time she devoted to helping me succeed through this internship, and because of her I was able to develop as both a student and an individual. I can never thank her enough, and I’m looking forward to checking in to see how Misty and Luna (her two black cats) are doing during the year! To end the evening, the interns decided to travel to a restaurant we hadn’t been back to since the beginning of the internship. It was nice to spend the last evening with everyone!

Friday, the day that marked the end of the internship. The day was booked with final intern presentations and a closing symposium, and all the interns were filled with both excitement yet nervousness. As each intern presented based on the program order, it seemed like ages (due to the nervousness) until I went up to the podium and presented my work this summer. Despite the live stream audio cutting out, I thought that the presentation went well! I simply found it quite fun to talk about the work I carried out this summer with others, and I of course had to throw in at least one (if not two) “Roll Tides” for good measure. And, before I knew it, I was done and was able to relax as the last few presentations concluded. The day came to a bitter-sweet ending with group photos in addition to books given to each intern based on their personality. I couldn’t believe it was over just like that, but I knew that I would never forget this opportunity I had been given.

The rest of the weekend mainly involved journeying back to Chattanooga, TN and getting back to Tuscaloosa by Sunday evening due to residential advisor training. Yes, it was quite a quick turnaround, and I didn’t have much time to relax back at home. However, it was great talking with my family on the ride back about the internship! It was also quite obligatory to make a pit stop at the new Buc-Ee’s in Sevierville on our way back. I was completely blown away by its size!

As I said during my presentation, I want to thank Dr. Christine O’Donnell for being one of the best mentors I could have ever asked for during this internship. Without her guidance and help this summer, I never would have been able to develop through this internship. I want to thank Kathryne Woodle and Michael Wittmann for helping to provide a vast amount of perspectives on the data and stats in addition to everyone I met at APS both virtually and in person! And, last but not least, I want to thank Brad Conrad, Mikayla Cleaver, and Kayla Stephens for providing me with an opportunity of a lifetime. I can never thank them enough for this program, and I look forward to staying in touch with everyone as I progress to the end of my undergraduate years!

Week 10 and the SPS Summer Internship program, thank you for everything.