SPS Zone Meeting
October 18, 2024 to October 19, 2024
Marietta College, Marietta, OH
Meeting host: By:Joseph Smith
SPS Chapter:
Fall 2024 SPS Zone 7 Meeting Report
On October 18-19, 2024, Marietta College hosted the Fall 2024 Meeting of the Society of Physics Students Zone 7 (Local Website: https://www.marietta.edu/physics-department/eglsaps and SPS Zone 7 site: https://sites.google.com/view/spszone7/events/2024-fall-zone-7-meeting). The meeting was locally hosted by the Marietta College Chapter #4091 in coordination with the Associate Zone Councilor Jacob Callebs and Zone Councilor Ronald Kumon. The meeting was held jointly with the APS Eastern Great Lakes Section (EGLS) and Appalachian Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). All events except for the dinner banquet were held on the campus of Marietta College. More than 70 undergraduate students, alumni and faculty members attended SPS events during the meeting from a total of at least 15 chapters from across the zone.
Attendance
We had more than 170 registrants for the joint meeting. More than 70 different undergraduate students, alumni and faculty members attended the Friday SPS kickoff meeting, observing night, and Saturday lunch/Jeopardy. We had many others also attend the SPS-sponsored plenary talk on Saturday. Chapters that were represented were from Albion College, Kettering University, Lawrence Technological University, Marietta College, Marshall University, Miami University, Northern Michigan University, Ohio State University, Ohio University, Ohio Wesleyan University, University of Mount Union, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wayne State University, West Virginia Wesleyan College, and Youngstown State University.
Meeting Narrative
SPS Zone 7 Kickoff Meeting
We had 69 attendees at the kickoff meeting from 15 different chapters. The meeting was run by Associate Zone Councilor Jacob Callebs (Wayne State University) and Zone Councilor Ronald Kumon (Kettering University), with a virtual streaming option for remote participants. Jacob and Dr. Kumon presented an overview of the Society of Physics Students (SPS), covering membership benefits like scholarships, summer internships, and resources for applying to graduate school. Attendees enjoyed snacks, drinks, and received SPS merchandise giveaways, adding to the excitement and engagement. They emphasized the importance of networking within SPS and encouraged attendees to engage actively. The meeting concluded with more information about the activities planned throughout the two-day Zone Meeting, including workshops, discussions, and networking sessions, fostering a collaborative environment for all attendees. Participants were excited about the opportunities to connect, learn, and share ideas across chapters.
Poster Session
The APS EGLS meeting had more than 40 poster submissions! The poster session had light refreshments and most of the presenters were students.
Students taking part in the poster session presented their research in the Gathering Place and had the chance to discuss with Marietta College students, faculty, staff, visiting members of other colleges/universities, and more. Discussion included specifics about their research, connections between like/adjacent projects, exchange of resumes and LinkedIn profiles, and more. Discussing their posters to a small group of visitors gave the students practice with presenting scientific information and allowed them to answer questions they might not have prepared for, bettering their understanding of their own project and building upon their communication skills. Following the conclusion of the poster session, all attendees were encouraged to attend the dinner banquet on the Valley Gem Sternwheel.
Dinner Banquet
The Friday banquet was on the Valley Gem Sternwheeler that floated down the Muskingum and Ohio Rivers during the meal. Support from SPS allowed the MC students organizers to attend and APS EGLS subsidized external student tickets ($10 total cost), which encouraged many students to attend. Associate Zone Councilor Jacob Callebs brought an inflatable cow costume and took pictures with many of the attendees!
Planetarium Show and Observing Night
Following dinner, there was a star talk and planetarium show “Supermassive Black Holes: Uncovering the Invisible” in the Anderson Hancock Planetarium run by Ann Bragg, Professor and Planetarium Director at Marietta College. Then there was an observing night at Gurley Observatory on the roof of Mills Hall at Marietta College. The observing night was run by Professor Craig Howald from Marietta College. We observed a variety of planets and other astronomical objects.
SPS-Sponsored Plenary Talk
Our fourth plenary speaker was Lisa McDonald who is a former SPS Associate Zone Councilor from Zone 11. Her talk discussed “Science Careers Outside the Laboratory.” We learned about Lisa from the SPS Speakers Bureau.
“This was a great talk and helped me to open my eyes to more careers in physics. I still am not sure what I want to do exactly after I graduate, but this talk gave me some more ideas to explore. I do kind of want to go into lab research, but it is nice to know that there are other options outside of academia and lab.” - Kaitlyn Stewart
Pizza Lunch and Physics Jeopardy
We had a very healthy attendance at the Saturday Pizza lunch and most attendees stayed for the physics Jeopardy event. The event was run by Marietta SPS Advisor Joseph Smith with assistance from many other advisors. We split up into seven teams which each picked a Greek letter for their team name. Teams were given a whiteboard to answer, so each team had a chance to answer every question. Team won the competition.
“The physics jeopardy and pizza lunch were super fun. It was great to have so many students from many different disciplines engaged in physics and we all had so much fun. There were students from different types of engineering, physics, and even a business major who came for fun It got competitive and rowdy as games do and it was great to sit back and enjoy the fun with everyone” -Kaitlyn Stewart
Student Experience: “I attended the contributed talks, specifically the presentations on quantum information were exceptional. I stayed for all of the presentations, it was clear there was a great mix of undergraduate, graduate, and PHD level work happening all around the Great Lakes area. From these presentations I got a much better idea of the kind of work that can be done in the field of quantum physics and found it rather inspiring as a possible career choice. I look forward to attending more SPS events in the near future.” - Caden Adams
Recommendations for Future Zone Meeting Planning
We had a higher than anticipated attendance, which made our food costs higher than budgeted. There were many “onsite” registrations, and not all students were indicated in the registration information provided by APS. Future zone planners should keep this in mind. The physics Jeopardy event was a big success! We modified the provided slides from SPS, so the numbers were hyperlinked, this made the color change when returning to make it easier to tell what was completed. We had every team answer using whiteboards instead of buzzing in so everyone could participate, which seemed to work well. We also added a final Jeopardy question based on a plenary talk at the conference It took much longer than the four weeks noted on the funding website to receive the first installment check from SPS, so if you need the money to pay for expenses before the meeting, you may wish to request even further in advance.
Conclusion
The Fall 2024 SPS Zone 7 Meeting at Marietta College provided excellent professional development and social activities for SPS students to connect with other physics students in Zone 7. We look forward to meeting again around the time of the next EGLS APS meeting at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, on April 11-12, 2025.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge financial support from SPS, APS EGLS, and the Rickey Endowment at Marietta College. We would also like to thank Jacob Callebs, Ron Kumon, and Franci Bolden for their help.