Cosmic Pathways: Developing a Career-Focused Regional Conference to Encourage High School and College Students to Pursue Physics in Higher Education

We have developed a novel conference for high school and college students with an interest in physics for the greater New York City area. The purpose of the conference was for students to explore answers to the following question, what can you do with a physics degree? This one-day conference occurred in March 2025 at City College of New York and had approximately 180 participants. This will be the first of many future conferences. Industry leaders, graduate students, and college physics departments were invited to participate in talks, panels, and an industry floor show creating presentations designed for first year college students and senior high school students. We will discuss data collected about attitudes about physics before and after the conference.