Advanced Research in Physics at West Virginia Wesleyan College

There has been a movement in the Physics community to provide a more advanced experience in research outside of the normal courses for the major at the undergraduate level. The goal has been to provide advanced experience in literature search, technical and laboratory skills, analysis, modeling, design, and communication. At West Virginia Wesleyan College, we have been approaching this challenge with a year-long course in the senior year that is devoted to experimental research. However, in 2017, we made the decision to develop a summer research program where students in their earlier years of college can also formulate a research idea with a faculty member and pursue it in a research setting with monetary support and housing. They are asked to define a research problem, do journal research, and propose and implement experimental and theoretical ideas to make further progress. They are introduced to advanced equipment, major journals, how to relate the problem to known Physics theory, and how to design an experiment. At the end of the summer session, students do an analysis on what they have learned, write a journal-style paper, and deliver a conference-style talk on their topic. Methods of raising money to support the summer students, topics that have been pursued for both groups, and contributions to the overall goal of introducing students to advanced Physics research will be discussed.