Society of Physics Students (SPS) earn national recognition

The UW-River Falls chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) has won an Outstanding Chapter Award for 2012-13 from the SPS National Office. This is the 17th time the UWRF chapter has been recognized for its excellence as a top-tier student-led physics club, a designation given to fewer than 10 percent of all SPS chapters at universities in the United States.

The SPS is a professional association designed for students and membership is open to anyone interested in physics. SPS operates within the American Institute of Physics, an umbrella organization for professional physical science societies.

The SPS chapter at UWRF is advised by Professor Earl Blodgett and is led by student officers.

The UWRF SPS chapter presented demonstrations at UWRF’s Family Day and at 3M Super Science Saturday. Public outreach efforts by the SPS students include judging events at several Science Olympiad tournaments and presenting a Halloween Haunted Lab. The SPS students presented demonstrations for several hundred high school students at Physics with the Minnesota Twins. Four students attended the Women in Physics conference at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and eight students attended the Sigma Pi Sigma Congress in Florida, the largest meeting of undergraduate physics students ever held.

SPS chapters are evaluated on their level of interaction with the campus community, the professional physics community, the public, and with SPS national programs. The Outstanding Chapter Award recognizes high levels of outreach as well as unique approaches to fulfilling the mission of SPS to “help students transform themselves into contributing members of the professional community.”

For more information on the SPS, visit www.spsnational.org.