Adopt-a-Physicist: Connecting Physicists with High School Students

We often tell students that they can do anything with a physics education, but when students are asked to draw a picture of a scientist they frequently draw Einstein-looking figures working alone in a lab. Many students - and even physics teachers - are unsure about exactly what it is that physicists do and where they work. In order to expose high school students to the variety of careers available to people that study physics and to combat misconceptions about what physicists ``look like,'' the American Physical Society Public Outreach team has created the Adopt-a-Physicist program. Through this program high school physics students find out first-hand about the careers, educational backgrounds, and lives of physics graduates (defined as having bachelor's degrees or higher). Each class can ``adopt'' up to three physicists by registering for their online discussion forums hosted by compadre.org. Classes can view profiles of all of the registered physicists and choose those whose interests align with theirs. Students are free to ask their physicists anything, within good taste, during the three-week period when the discussion forums are active. Results and outcomes from the preliminary sessions will be discussed in this talk. More details are available at \underline {http://www.adoptaphysicist.org} .