SPS Zone Meeting
March 23, 2024
Salt Lake City, UT
Meeting host: By:Gracy Jane Pugmire
SPS Chapter:
SPS ZONE 15 MEETING
REPORT BY GRACY JANE PUGMIRE
MARCH 23, 2024
HOST: UNIVERSITY OF UTAH SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
ATTENDEES
At our zone meeting, we had attendees representing many schools throughout the state of Utah! These schools included: Utah state, Weber State, Salt Lake Community College, Westminster University, and Utah Valley University. In total, we had 20 people attending (not including students from the University of Utah).
NARRATIVE
On Saturday, March 23rd, 2024, the University of Utah hosted the zone meeting for the Society of Physics Students zone 15; for which many participants throughout the entire zone traveled to participate in. Though this wasn’t the only fun activity the zone engaged with, the night before, the zone met up in downtown Salt Lake City to watch a movie at the Clark Planetarium! After an exciting night out together, the zone met up on the University of Utah campus the next morning and engaged in some serious physics. The morning started with a filling breakfast of bagels and fruit, followed by talks from grad students on campus, Tino Nyawelo and Michael Semaan, about careers in physics and the thermodynamics of information. Both were very informational, and we all learned a lot. We then had a business meeting, followed by lunch and a poster session from the students. We shared our research and learned from each other! After that, we had three of our professors from the University of Utah present their research/ teach us about demo techniques. We all gained a lot of new knowledge from each, and many students from other schools were very interested in our research programs! Students made many connections with our professors. We then had some play time and socialized during our show and tell/ socializing time, many of the students connected to each other, and we had a lot of fun.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE EVENT PLANNING
For future events, we need to focus on planning sooner in advance, and getting more notification out to the other chapters. We will do this by organizing our emails we send and sending them more often. We also will find ways to engage schools that are a farther distance from Salt Lake City, such as schools in Montana and Canada. We might make it accessible via zoom or get more funding for hotels for the students.
Career Resources:
