Fixing the Pipeline: Student led High School Outreach and Undergraduate Research Preparation During the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more damage to an already broken educational pipeline of physics. The Pew Research Foundation has shown that some of the main reasons underrepresented minorities and students of color do not pursue careers in STEM are the lack of representation, mentorship, and skill/educational development (1). Here, we present a student-led outreach effort at UC Irvine to introduce high school students to plasma and nuclear physics with the goal of increasing BIPoC+Women professionals representation. Additionally, we present a summary of our computational plasma physics workshops meant to help underrepresented undergraduate students obtain the skills needed to conduct research which are otherwise untaught yet presumed to be. We hope our efforts will encourage others to help in improving the educational pipeline for underrepresented minorities.

(1) Funk, C., & Parker, K. (2018). Women and men in STEM often at odds over workplace equity.