Developing Undergraduate Research in High Energy Physics at Minority Serving Institutions with Multi-Institutional Consortium

Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) tends to have low research activity and focuses on teaching. Students from MSI often only have research experience during their Summer breaks, while students at research institutions have the opportunity to be involved in research year-round. This limits the research opportunity of undergraduates from MSIs and creates an inequity in their future applications into the workforce or graduate school. The GROWTH-MSI program, funded by DOE's RENEW Initiative, will increase accessibility and recruit a diverse workforce into High Energy Physics (HEP) from MSIs. The program will 1) support up to 20 undergraduate researchers year-round from 6 different MSIs, 2) build-up research infrastructures at two MSIs institution previously never been funded before in HEP. The MSIs in the consortium are: Calif. State Universities Stanislaus, Sonoma, Fresno, East Bay and San Francisco and UC Merced. Each cohort of undergraduate will be approximately 10 students. This allows the MSIs to offer an introductory particle physics course yearly, which is typically not available at these MSIs. Students and faculties will be connected to research institutions year-round to collaborate on research and shared seminar sessions. The research institutions are: SLAC National Accelerator Lab, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore Lab, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara. This consortium will allow students, professors and research scientists to collaborate on various research projects in HEP.