LPL Newsletter for December 2021
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
All of us at LPL are very grateful for the gifts and support of our Alumni and Friends. Monetary gifts help support our education and research efforts and most particularly, our graduate students. This month, I wanted to highlight some giving opportunities in case you’d like to consider supporting the Lab this holiday season. You can given to any of these funds by visiting the University of Arizona Foundation and choosing the particular fund from the drop down menu or specifying in the “Other” field. Read on to learn how the Carson Fellowship supports our students and how your support can help to improve the LPL library or bring distinguished scientists to LPL. Thank you for considering LPL in your giving. Our donors play a vital role in the ongoing success of our program.
Carson LPL Graduate Fellowship
The Carson LPL Graduate Fellowship supports an outstanding incoming graduate student by providing their first year stipend. This allows the student to sample the variety of opportunities at LPL before joining a particular research group. Current graduate student Benjamin Sharkey, highlighted in our news item below, was himself once a Carson Fellow. With rising costs, the Carson endowment no longer can fully support a student, so we’ve had to dip in to other funds. New gifts to this endowment will go a long way toward fully supporting our most outstanding incoming graduate students in the future.
Recent Carson Fellowship recipients include:
Sam Myers, "The Carson Fellowship alleviated the pressure to find an advisor right away and gave me the freedom to figure out exactly what I wanted to study in graduate school."
Jada Walters, "I received the Carson Fellowship during the 2019-2020 academic year; a tumultuous year for everyone. During the abrupt transition from in-person learning/research to working from home, I used the travel/supply stipend provided in the fellowship towards a home office setup. Having this stipend allowed me to access the computational resources I needed to seamlessly continue my research and benefited me beyond the 2019-2020 fellowship year as I primarily worked from home up to the fall 2021 semester."
Ben Sharkey, "As a recipient of the Carson Fellowship, I was able to focus on proposing and conducting telescope observations that formed the basis for my entire dissertation. The freedom afforded by the fellowship allowed me to focus on data collection and skill development, which has been critical to my growth as a student."
LPL Library
The LPL library is a dated, with a lot of space occupied by journal volumes that are today all available online. Our current graduate students and the Library committee have developed a vision for removing the redundant volumes—while keeping books and other important hardcopy documents—to make room for additional student study space. We’d like to paint and refresh the room to make it more welcoming, with comfortable chairs, tables, and power outlets for our graduate students and other researchers. We need to raise $20,000 to make this vision possible and any gift would be a great start.
Showman Distinguished Lectureship
The Adam P. Showman Distinguished Lectureship will welcome our first visiting lecturer this year, Dr. Heather Knutson of Caltech. Professor Knutson will spend most of a week at LPL in April, collaborating with students and presenting a special colloquium. Additional gifts to the Showman fund will allow us to honor Adam’s legacy with annual distinguished visitors such as Professor Knutson.
