At CLASS, we want to communicate with you. We engage the global public via online news releases, videos, and regular website highlights. We also focus on local STEM development through presentations and interactions with students, teachers and the general public in Baltimore and other cities. The following are some of our outreach and educational initiatives:
- CLASS Outreach at the JHU Physics Fair
Every year in the springtime the CLASS team engages the public through the JHU Physics Fair. Hundreds of visitors, from school children to seniors, attend the fair each year. We invite the visitors to tour the telescopes and experience CLASS technology with hands-on demonstrations. At the fair the public also learn about radio astronomy through guided operation of our teaching radio telescope. And the science fun goes beyond astronomy topics: CLASS researchers help children build spaghetti-marshmallow towers and show how to make ice cream with liquid nitrogen. The Physics Fair is an important part of the CLASS mission of science education and public outreach.
- CLASS: Training the Next Generation of Scientists and Engineers
Beyond exploring important questions in science, CLASS is also devoted to fostering the next generation of ground-breaking scientists and engineers. Undergraduate students make important contributions through summer internships and academic projects. PhD students build new instruments for the telescopes and analyze the CLASS data for cosmology. Postdoctoral researchers oversee large parts of the CLASS project in preparation to lead their own research groups.
CLASS provides a rigorous research training ground for undergraduates and Ph.D. candidates, and postdoctoral researchers develop leadership skills to start their own research groups. By fostering these young investigators, the proposed research is not only creating ground-breaking science, it is creating the next trail-blazing scientists.
CLASS teammates go on to pursue a variety of paths to science and engineering through careers in academia, industry and government. On our CLASS Team page, we give information on the direction our CLASS Alumni have taken after completing their work on our project.
