Students who excel in their coursework may be invited to engage in this activity, which frequently leads to publication in research journals. Students may also coauthor and present papers at national meetings of the professional societies in physics, biophysics, and astronomy. A student may also elect to do a research internship at another institution. In recent years, students have done summer internships at Columbia University, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of Colorado, University of Utah, and Tektronix. One student took an academic semester plus a summer research internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Some students continue to do collaborative research during the academic year.
Students may also propose research projects of their own, to be carried out in their junior and senior years. Those who qualify are invited to do an honors thesis during their senior year. The physics department has five full-time faculty with diverse interests and specializations. Our full-time staff includes a secretary, a machinist and instrument maker, and an electronics technician. The Olin Center for Physics and Chemistry provides more than 40,000 square feet of classroom, laboratory, library, and study space.