Title

Piloting STEAM career camp for high school girls and improving project efficiency for the vacuum lab

Author Info

Carolina NavaFollow

Recommended Citation

January 1, 2018.

Abstract

Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory launched a new summer camp for high school girls to envision themselves in STEAM careers and is in the midst of upgrading the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) for experiments that sharpen our view of how nature works on the atomic level and on ultrafast timescales. My work included testing and streamlining the technological processes for human cost-savings, eliminating redundancy, and providing cleaner data for the engineers in the vacuum laboratory and the educational processes for the camp.

For the LCLS-II, I reviewed the daily shop logs, recorded completed tasks, and scheduled future tasks. Every component that went through the vacuum shop came with a traveler that included the tasks needed to achieve a reduced amount of gas inside the different pieces through baking and outgassing processes. Through the Microsoft Project interface, I created a visual representation of the schedule at the different ovens and nitrogen purging systems and streamlined the schedule to avoid need for manual input. Additionally, I took RGA (Residual Gas Analyzer) scans of cable for the LCLS-II photon mirror chamber and entered analyzed and the corresponding data.

The SAGE-S Summer Camp (SLAC Accelerating Girls' Engagement in STEAM) brought 20 high school girls from the surrounding areas to participate in the pilot project of a one week hands-on experience in science and engineering. The girls shadowed different physicists, mechanical engineers, and other scientists in their daily work lives, as well as had daily presentations about a “day in the life” of other related professions from the women at SLAC.. I test piloted all the students’ projects and provided insight for the educational objectives. One of the projects was the creation of an electric motor, for which I provided troubleshooting with the students to identify adjustments needed.

Mentor

Giulia Lanza and Loy Oppus-Moe

Lab site

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC)

Funding Acknowledgement

The 2018 STEM Teacher and Researcher Program and this project have been made possible through support from Chevron (www.chevron.com), the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation (www.marinesanctuary.org), the National Science Foundation through the Robert Noyce Program under Grant #1836335 and 1340110, the California State University Office of the Chancellor, and California Polytechnic State University in partnership with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.