Wolff-Reichert Award: Sustainable laboratory experiences spanning the physics curriculum to addressdiverse students and career preparation

Physics careers require diverse skills: working on a team, design and testing, technical writing, and project management. Traditional physics undergraduate programs focus on a single element in this broad ability set, content knowledge, with potentially detrimental consequences. Students with strong professional skills and an interest in real world applications, who as a result would be excellent physicists, sometimes leave the physics community. Students who "fit well" with physics undergraduate education may struggle in transitioning to jobs due to the disconnect between their expectations/training and workplace reality. Since 2012, NC State Physics has experimented with adding short (1-2 week) career-focused, hands-on activities occurring frequently in freshman-junior years and culminating in a term-long senior design course explicitly intended as a bridge to the workplace. Mini-labs (a single lab innately associated with the course content) introduce real-world applications for freshman and later add an experimental component to theory-only classes. Physics senior design is a mock-work experience where small groups of students design and construct a scientific apparatus for a sponsor in 10 weeks, while frequently presenting their progress to a rotating group of observers. Graduate tracking and a group chat for alumni currently seeking jobs provide detailed pertinent career information for students based on alumni experiences. I will discuss these innovations and assessment of resultant physics ability beliefs, belonging, persistence, and career outcomes. Acknowledgement of co-authors: Dana Thomas, Erin Crites, Hayden White, Joy Gayles, NC State Departments of Physics and Educational Leadership, Policy and Human Development.