My name is Lauren
Harris, I am going into my final semester at the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro (UNCG). I have always loved the sciences thanks to my dad and
always had a fascination with the stars. This led me to take a lot of science
and math as I grew up, especially when I got to high school. I took both honors
and AP physics during those years and fell in love with the subject. At the
same time I was participating in my high schools theater department as a part
of, and eventually the leader of, the costumes department. I eventually went to
college to do theater design, but after only a few short months, decided that
wasn’t the life I wanted to follow. After this I decided to go back to my true
love, science. I had been taking an astronomy course and decided to go and talk
to my professor about changing my major to physics. I registered for the intro
class the next semester and fell in love again. Now I can’t imagine being
anywhere else.
While I was in college,
I had the opportunity to teach labs for the intro sequence (to see more about
that look at my previous research). After
teaching the labs for just over a year, I realized that teaching was my
passion. I started looking into Physics Education Research, which will
ultimately become my field of research for graduate school next fall. This REU
has been an amazing opportunity to see what other opportunities are available
as far as research in this field.
It has been such
an amazing summer and I feel truly blessed to have gotten this opportunity.