Beyond Summers: Further Experiences in the Scientific & Engineering Student Internship (SESI) Program at NASA's GSFC

For the past 20 years, we have provided exceptional summer research experiences solar and heliospheric physics to talented undergraduates in our SESI program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. This is a program operated in the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA/GSFC. Both NASA/GSFC and the NSF/REU program have supported this program. In recent years, we have been able to provide continued research opportunities beyond the summer to both undergraduates and recent graduates seeking "time off" before continuing with their graduate school education. In a typical year, we provide research opportunities from seven to twelve months to 2-3 individuals seeking additional research experience before starting graduate school. In almost all cases, these individuals have been part of our SESI program. So far, 100% of those f funded in this way have gone on to graduate school in the STEM disciplines. We are seeking to expand the number of undergraduate students and those taking time off that do research year-round through our combined SESI program. This synergistic program exposes our interns to a very wide range of projects and ideas, normally unavailable in other programs. We have had roughly 320 students (about 1/2 being supported by NSF) actively participate in over 200 different research opportunities. These research projects have spanned the spectrum, ranging from theoretical modeling associated with space weather, developing instrumentation for space missions, analysis of spacecraft data, including 'hands-on' experience with sounding rockets and working in the clean environs of GSFC's Detector Development Laboratory. Further information can be obtained at http://iacs.cua.edu/ and http://sesi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ This program is open to both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, and is funded through NSF grant AGS-1062729 and NASA/GSFC grant NNX11AJ04G and cooperative agreement NNG11PL10A.