Office of Fusion Energy Sciences/Division of Plasma Physics Partnership in Education and Outreach

Education and Outreach (E/O) activities in fusion and plasma physics have benefited greatly from the contributions of the American Physical Society-Division of Plasma Physics (APS-DPP) members, most of whom are researchers funded by the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES), a part of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science. The E/O activities that take place each year at the annual meeting of the APS-DPP have, in many cases, grown out of the E/O work funded at laboratories, universities, and industries engaged in OFES research. The E/O partnership between the APS-DPP and DOE began with a Science Teachers Day held at the 1988 APS-DPP meeting in Hollywood, Fl. The next major step was the addition of the Plasma Expo at the 1994 APS-DPP meeting in Minneapolis, which helped to galvanize the entire DPP community. Researchers at General Atomics, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and the University of Wisconsin, along with their colleagues from other institutions, were encouraged to help both OFES and DPP realize their education goals. The E/O activities have been highly visible and greatly valued at the DPP annual meetings and have become a hallmark of these meetings. While there are several programs specifically supported by OFES for the purpose of education and outreach, there is strong encouragement by OFES that all of its research programs contain a recognition of the importance of real-life fusion examples to enhance science education and to raise public awareness of fusion energy. As with the OFES E/O programs, the DPP E/O efforts are extremely dependent on voluntary work by personnel from across the fusion community. These outstanding E/O contributions, anchored by the OFES/DPP partnership, will be presented.