Achievement

A programmatic achievement of OSEP-IGERT has been the success of the requirement that students in this program take five mini-courses: Ethics, Electronics, Instrument Shop, Public Speaking, and Technical Writing. These are required courses to earn their Optics Certificate. Gratifyingly, there has been a noticeable improvement of students who have taken these courses in these areas, as observed by their advisors.

Students who took the mini-course on technical writing, for example, reported that they found it extremely helpful in guiding them through the process of writing a first paper. One individual, OSEP-IGERT student Kristen Vogelhuber, noted that a paper she wrote in that class was accepted and recently published and credited her success to the organizational and writing skills acquired in this course.